It has been quite some time since anyone caught a glimpse of the acclaimed actor Daniel Day-Lewis. After he statement in 2017 declaring he would cease to work as an actor, just before the debut of The Phantom Thread, Day-Lewis quietly faded from view. However, during his hiatus, his legend has only grown.
The Legend Surrounding His Acting Method
Largely, this reputation centers on his preferred style of working. As someone known for disappears into the roles he plays – for example, while filming Lincoln, he had the director address him as “Mr. President” for the entire production – audiences has grown increasingly obsessed with how he works. Is it true he really send messages to co-star Sally Field as Abraham Lincoln? Was it accurate that he consumed solely animals he’d killed for The Last of the Mohicans? And did he demand receiving food via spoon while filming My Left Foot?
Madness in their method: has the public lost interest with over-the-top performances?
Now, Daniel Day-Lewis has returned in the limelight, with some hesitation, promoting his latest movie Anemone. And he is using this to express his anger at how the Method technique is viewed. “I am somewhat annoyed nowadays to hear various individuals gobbling off and using phrases like ‘fully embraced the Method’, which I think is meant to imply that someone is acting insane in an extreme fashion,” he told a major publication. “Everyone tends to focus on superficial details of the work, and those details typically include some form of self-flagellation or a situation that imposes upon oneself extreme unease or mental instability. But of course, in the career for a performer, it has to principally be about the inner transformation.”
An Industry of Imitators
Frankly, this sounds like Day-Lewis has emerged from his retreat only to discover aghast at the acting community that has been created mirroring his methods. When you are widely considered one of the greatest actors in history, and your approach includes striking a prop until you break your nose (in Gangs of New York) or spending two days in solitary confinement without food or water (during In the Name of the Father), it’s natural that fellow performers will want to fill that vacuum by imitating your hero.
In other words, we exist in a landscape full of half-cocked imitators of Day-Lewis who strive only to demonstrate the extensive degree of effort they put into their roles. On the milder side of this trend there are performers such as Lady Gaga, who was determined to earn an Academy Award for House of Gucci that she spent the whole campaign attempting to persuade people that she became an Italian native for a year and a half in preparation.
Then we have Jared Leto, who decided to deeply embed himself into the role as the Joker (for Suicide Squad) through sending “horrifying” presents to his castmates. These, depending on who you ask, range from dead pigs and rats to anal beads and used condoms, although the actor refuted those worst excesses. And then, naturally, we have Jim Carrey, who went so deep into Andy Kaufman for Man on the Moon that filmmakers literally managed in creating a full-length documentary out of B-roll of him causing difficulties as impossible as he could for everyone around him.
Contemporary Followers of the Method
The foremost practitioner of the Method at the moment seems to be Jeremy Strong (formerly an assistant to Day-Lewis), whose approach while filming Succession was so laboriously intensive that it formed the basis of a derisive New Yorker profile, full of quotes from people who were worried about his conduct (“The toll to himself concerns me,” said co-star Brian Cox) or extremely irritated by his actions (“I recall [him] making others to react with exasperation,” stated an unnamed co-star).
The actor says he ‘did not plan to retire, truly’
There are numerous additional cases. Andrew Garfield abstained from sex for six months while preparing for Silence. Leonardo DiCaprio rested inside a dead animal for The Revenant. It’s quite possible that actor Austin Butler still speaks in the style of Elvis, three years after that film came out. Each of these instances, to some extent, is meant to invoke the dedication with which Day-Lewis takes his craft.
A Noble Yet Challenging Fight
And, although his rebuttal to critics of the Method might be noble, a short publicity tour might not be enough to alter perceptions, let alone their practices. Maybe if he wishes to make audiences recall what method acting is, or to demonstrate what it can achieve, then the optimal strategy for Day-Lewis is to simply start making more films. Surely everyone would support that idea.
