It has been a long while since the public caught a glimpse of Daniel Day-Lewis. After he announcement in 2017 declaring he would cease to work as an actor, just before the release of The Phantom Thread, the actor quietly faded from view. Yet, during his hiatus, his reputation expanded further.
The Legend Surrounding His Acting Method
Primarily, this legend centers on his preferred approach to roles. Being an actor who famously immerses himself in the roles he plays – for instance, during Lincoln, reportedly asked Steven Spielberg address him as “Mr. President” throughout the shoot – the world has become increasingly obsessed with how he works. Did he really send messages to co-star Sally Field in character as Lincoln? Did he consumed solely game he hunted during Last of the Mohicans? And did he insist on receiving food via spoon for My Left Foot?
Madness in their method: has the public lost interest with actorly excess?
Now, Daniel Day-Lewis has returned to public attention, with some hesitation, promoting his latest movie Anemone. He is taking this chance to vocalise his anger at how method acting is viewed. “I’m a little cross these days to hear various individuals gobbling off and using phrases like ‘fully embraced the Method’, which seems is meant to imply that someone is behaving like a lunatic in a drastic way,” he stated to a major publication. “Everyone tends to focus on the less important aspects of acting, and those details typically include some form of self-flagellation or a situation that causes a severe discomfort or mental instability. But of course, in the life for a performer, it must principally be about the inner transformation.”
A World Full of Followers
Frankly, this sounds as if Day-Lewis has emerged from his retreat and found himself aghast at the world that has developed in his image. If you’re regarded as among the best actors in history, and your approach 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 attempt to emulate that example by trying to mimic their idol.
Essentially, we exist in a landscape populated by half-cocked imitators of Day-Lewis who want nothing more than to show the world the sheer amount of dedication they put into their roles. On the milder side of this trend we have people like Lady Gaga, who was so desperate to earn an Academy Award for House of Gucci that she spent the entire promotion trying to convince everyone that she became functionally Italian for a year and a half in preparation.
Then we have Jared Leto, who decided to immerse himself into the role as the Joker (in Suicide Squad) by sending “horrifying” gifts to fellow cast members. These, depending on who you ask, included dead pigs and rats to anal beads and used condoms, though the actor refuted those worst excesses. And then, of course, we have Jim Carrey, who immersed himself so fully into Andy Kaufman for Man on the Moon that filmmakers succeeded to get a full-length documentary out of B-roll of him causing difficulties as impossible as he could for everyone around him.
The Modern Method Practitioners
The foremost practitioner of the Method at the moment seems to be Jeremy Strong (once Day-Lewis’s assistant), whose approach while filming Succession was so laboriously intensive that it became the subject of a critical New Yorker profile, including statements from individuals who were worried about his conduct (“The toll on himself that worries me,” said co-star Brian Cox) or extremely irritated by it (“I recall [him] making everyone else roll their eyes,” said an anonymous cast member).
Daniel Day-Lewis says he ‘never intended to stop acting, truly’
We have so many other examples. Andrew Garfield abstained from sex for six months for Silence. Leonardo DiCaprio rested inside a dead animal 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. Each of these instances, in part, aims to evoke the dedication with which Day-Lewis takes his craft.
A Noble Yet Challenging Battle
And, although his rebuttal to critics of the Method might be noble, a brief promotional cycle might not be enough to alter perceptions, not to mention their practices. Perhaps if he wants to remind people what method acting is, or to show them what it can achieve, then the optimal strategy for Day-Lewis is to just start making more films. Surely everyone would support that idea.
