It has been a long while since the public caught a glimpse of Daniel Day-Lewis. After he statement in 2017 that he would no longer work as an actor, prior to the release of Phantom Thread, Day-Lewis withdrew from the spotlight. Yet, during his hiatus, his legend expanded further.
The Mythos of His Acting Method
Primarily, this reputation revolves around his preferred style of working. Being an actor who famously immerses himself in his characters – for instance, during the Lincoln biopic, he had Steven Spielberg call him “Mr. President” for the entire production – audiences has grown increasingly obsessed with how he works. Is it true he actually sent texts to Sally Field as Abraham Lincoln? Was it accurate that he only eat game he hunted during The Last of the Mohicans? And did he demand being spoon-fed for My Left Foot?
Madness in their method: has the public lost interest with actorly excess?
Now, Day-Lewis has returned to public attention, with some hesitation, for his new film Anemone. And he is using this to express his anger at how method acting is viewed. “I’m a little cross nowadays when I hear all kinds of people gobbling off and saying things like ‘fully embraced the Method’, which I think is meant to imply that a person’s behaving like a lunatic in an extreme fashion,” he told a major publication. “People often concentrate on the less important details of the work, and those details always seem to involve some form of self-flagellation or an experience that imposes upon oneself a severe discomfort or mental instability. But of course, in the life of an actor, it has to mainly focus on the internal work.”
An Industry Full of Followers
Frankly, this sounds like the actor has emerged from his retreat only to discover aghast at the acting community that has developed mirroring his methods. If you’re widely considered one of the greatest actors in history, and your process includes headbutting a dummy to the point of injury (in Gangs of New York) or enduring two days in solitary confinement deprived of sustenance (for In the Name of the Father), it’s natural that fellow performers will want to fill that vacuum by trying to mimic your hero.
Essentially, we exist in a landscape full of imperfect Day-Lewis impersonators who want nothing more than to demonstrate the extensive degree of dedication they put into a character. At the shallow end of this trend we have people like Lady Gaga, who was so desperate to win an Oscar with House of Gucci that she spent the whole campaign trying to convince everyone that she transformed into an Italian native over 18 months as preparation.
Then we have Jared Leto, who decided to immerse himself in the character of the Joker (for Suicide Squad) by sending “horrifying” presents to fellow cast members. These items, depending on who you ask, included dead pigs and rats to anal beads and used condoms, although Leto denied those worst excesses. And then, of course, we have Jim Carrey, who went so deep as Andy Kaufman during Man on the Moon that they literally managed in creating a full-length documentary from behind-the-scenes footage of him causing difficulties as impossible as he could for everyone around him.
Contemporary Method Practitioners
The main practitioner of the Method currently seems to be Jeremy Strong (once an assistant to Day-Lewis), whose process during Succession was so laboriously intensive that it became the subject of a critical magazine feature, including statements from people who were worried for his behaviour (“The toll to himself that worries me,” remarked Brian Cox) or annoyed beyond all measure by it (“I recall him causing everyone else to react with exasperation,” stated an anonymous cast member).
Daniel Day-Lewis says he ‘never intended to stop acting, truly’
There are numerous additional cases. Andrew Garfield abstained from sex for six months for Silence. Leonardo DiCaprio slept in an animal carcass during The Revenant. It’s quite possible that Austin Butler continues to talk in the style of Elvis, three years after that film came out. All of this, to some extent, aims to evoke the seriousness in which Day-Lewis approaches his craft.
An Admirable Yet Challenging Fight
And, although his rebuttal to critics of the Method might be noble, a short publicity tour may prove insufficient to alter perceptions, not to mention their behaviour. Maybe if he wants to make audiences recall the true essence of the Method, or to demonstrate what it can achieve, then the optimal strategy for Day-Lewis is to simply start making additional movies. Surely everyone would support that idea.
