It’s been a long while since anyone caught a glimpse of Daniel Day-Lewis. After he announcement in 2017 that he would cease to work as an actor, just before the debut of Phantom Thread, Day-Lewis quietly faded from view. However, during his hiatus, his reputation has only grown.
The Mythos of His Acting Method
Primarily, this reputation centers on his favored approach to roles. Being an actor known for disappears into his characters – for example, while filming the Lincoln biopic, he had the director call him “Mr President” for the entire production – the world has grown increasingly obsessed with how he works. Did he really send messages to co-star Sally Field as Abraham Lincoln? Did he only eat game he hunted during The Last of the Mohicans? And did he insist on being spoon-fed for My Left Foot?
Madness in their method: has the public fallen out of love with actorly excess?
Now, Daniel Day-Lewis is back to public attention, somewhat reluctantly, for his new film Anemone. And he is taking this chance to express his anger regarding how the Method technique is perceived. “I’m a little cross nowadays when I hear various individuals talking carelessly 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 stated to the New York Times. “Everyone tends to focus on the less important aspects of acting, and these elements typically include some form of self-flagellation or a situation that imposes upon oneself extreme unease or mental instability. But of course, in the life of an actor, it must mainly focus on the internal work.”
A World of Imitators
To be honest, it appears as if the actor has emerged from seclusion and found himself aghast at the acting community that has been created in his image. When you are widely considered one of the greatest performers to ever work, and your process involves striking a prop until you break your nose (for Gangs of New York) or enduring two days in isolation deprived of sustenance (for In the Name of the Father), then it stands to reason that fellow performers will want to emulate that example by trying to mimic their idol.
In other words, we exist in a landscape populated by half-cocked imitators of Day-Lewis who strive only to demonstrate the sheer amount 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 win an Oscar with House of Gucci that she spent the whole campaign trying to convince everyone that she became functionally Italian for a year and a half in preparation.
Additionally, there is Jared Leto, who decided to immerse himself in the character as the Joker (for Suicide Squad) through sending “horrifying” gifts to fellow cast members. These items, depending on who you ask, range from dead pigs and rats to intimate objects and used condoms, although Leto denied the most extreme claims. Then, naturally, we have Jim Carrey, who immersed himself so fully into Andy Kaufman for Man on the Moon that filmmakers literally managed to get a feature-length documentary out of B-roll of him making life as impossible as he could for his colleagues.
Contemporary Followers of the Method
The main practitioner of the Method at the moment seems to be Jeremy Strong (once Day-Lewis’s assistant), whose approach while filming Succession was so rigorously detailed that it became the basis of a critical New Yorker profile, full of quotes from people who were either concerned for his behaviour (“It’s the cost on himself concerns me,” remarked co-star Brian Cox) or extremely irritated by it (“I recall [him] making everyone else to react with exasperation,” stated an unnamed co-star).
The actor says he ‘did not plan to retire, truly’
We have numerous additional cases. Andrew Garfield went celibate for six months while preparing for Silence. Leonardo DiCaprio slept in an animal carcass for The Revenant. It’s quite possible that actor Austin Butler still speaks like Elvis Presley, years following the movie’s release. Each of these instances, in part, aims to evoke the dedication in which Day-Lewis takes his work.
A Noble Yet Challenging Fight
And, although his rebuttal to critics of the Method could be commendable, a brief promotional cycle might not be enough to change anyone’s mind, let alone their practices. Perhaps if he wants to make audiences recall what method acting is, or to show them what it can achieve, then the optimal strategy for Day-Lewis is to just start making additional movies. Surely everyone would support that idea.
