It’s been quite some time since anyone saw or heard from the acclaimed actor Daniel Day-Lewis. Following his announcement in 2017 declaring he would cease to work as an actor, just before the release of Phantom Thread, Day-Lewis quietly faded from view. However, in his absence, his legend has only grown.
The Legend of His Acting Method
Largely, this reputation centers on his preferred approach to roles. Being an actor who famously disappears into the roles he plays – for example, during the Lincoln biopic, he had Steven Spielberg call him “Mr. President” throughout the shoot – the world has become increasingly obsessed with his process. Did he really send messages to co-star Sally Field as Abraham Lincoln? Was it accurate that he only eat animals he’d killed for Last of the Mohicans? And did he demand being spoon-fed while filming My Left Foot?
Madness in their method: has the public lost interest with actorly excess?
Currently, Daniel Day-Lewis is back in the limelight, somewhat reluctantly, for his new film Anemone. He is using this to express his anger regarding how the Method technique is viewed. “I’m a little cross these days when I hear various individuals talking carelessly and using phrases like ‘gone full method’, which seems is meant to imply that a person’s acting insane in a drastic way,” he stated to a major publication. “Everyone often concentrate on superficial aspects of acting, and these elements typically include some form of self-punishment or a situation that causes extreme unease or mental instability. However, in the career of an actor, it has to mainly focus on the internal work.”
An Industry Full of Followers
To be honest, this sounds like Day-Lewis has come out from seclusion only to discover shocked by the world that has developed mirroring his methods. If you’re regarded as among the best performers to ever work, and your approach includes striking a prop to the point of injury (for Gangs of New York) or spending 48 hours in isolation deprived of sustenance (for In the Name of the Father), then it stands to reason that fellow performers will want to fill that vacuum by imitating their idol.
In other words, we exist in a landscape full of half-cocked imitators of Day-Lewis who want nothing more than to demonstrate the sheer amount of effort they put into their roles. On the milder side of the pool we have people like Lady Gaga, who was so desperate to win an Oscar for House of Gucci that she spent the whole campaign attempting to persuade people that she became an Italian native over 18 months as preparation.
Then we have Jared Leto, who chose to deeply embed himself into the role of the Joker (in Suicide Squad) by sending “disturbing” gifts to his castmates. These items, depending on who you ask, included dead pigs and rats to anal beads and used condoms, although Leto denied the most extreme claims. And then, naturally, there is Jim Carrey, who went so deep into Andy Kaufman during Man on the Moon that filmmakers literally managed to get a feature-length documentary out of B-roll of him causing difficulties as impossible as he could for everyone around him.
The Modern Method Practitioners
The main Method Guy currently would appear to be Jeremy Strong (formerly an assistant to Day-Lewis), whose process during Succession was so rigorously detailed that it formed the basis of a derisive New Yorker profile, including statements from individuals who were either concerned about his conduct (“It’s the cost to himself concerns me,” remarked Brian Cox) or annoyed beyond all measure by his actions (“I recall him causing everyone else to react with exasperation,” stated an unnamed co-star).
Daniel Day-Lewis claims he ‘never intended to stop acting, truly’
There are numerous additional cases. Andrew Garfield abstained from sex over half a year while preparing for Silence. Leonardo DiCaprio rested inside a dead animal for The Revenant. There’s a fighting chance that Austin Butler still speaks in the style of Elvis, years following that film came out. Each of these instances, in part, aims to evoke the seriousness in which Day-Lewis takes his craft.
An Admirable But Uphill Fight
And, while his fightback to critics of the Method might be noble, a brief promotional cycle may prove insufficient to change anyone’s mind, let alone their practices. Perhaps if he wants to remind people what method acting is, or to demonstrate its potential results, then Day-Lewis’s best bet is to simply start making more films. Certainly everyone would get behind that.
