It’s been a long while since anyone saw or heard from the acclaimed actor Daniel Day-Lewis. After he announcement in 2017 declaring he would no longer pursue acting, just before the release of Phantom Thread, Day-Lewis quietly faded from view. Yet, in his absence, his reputation expanded further.
The Legend Surrounding His Acting Method
Largely, this legend revolves around his favored style of working. As someone known for disappears into the roles he plays – for example, while filming the Lincoln biopic, he had the director address him as “Mr President” for the entire production – audiences has become increasingly obsessed with how he works. Is it true he really send messages to co-star Sally Field as Abraham Lincoln? Did he consumed solely animals he’d killed during The Last of the Mohicans? Did he insist on receiving food via spoon for My Left Foot?
Madness in their method: have we lost interest with over-the-top performances?
Now, Day-Lewis is back to public attention, somewhat reluctantly, promoting his latest movie Anemone. And he is taking this chance to vocalise his anger at how the Method technique 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 someone is acting insane in an extreme fashion,” he told a major publication. “People tends to focus on the less important aspects of acting, and these elements typically include some form of self-flagellation or an experience that causes extreme unease or mental instability. But of course, in the career of an actor, it has to mainly focus on the internal work.”
A World of Imitators
To be honest, it appears like Day-Lewis has come out from seclusion only to discover shocked by the world that has been created mirroring his methods. When you are regarded as one of the greatest actors to ever work, and your approach involves headbutting a dummy until you break your nose (in Gangs of New York) or enduring two days in isolation deprived of sustenance (for In the Name of the Father), it’s natural that fellow performers will attempt to emulate that example by trying to mimic your hero.
In other words, we exist in an environment full of imperfect imitators of Day-Lewis who want nothing more than to demonstrate the extensive degree of effort they invest in a character. At the shallow end of this trend there are performers such as Lady Gaga, who was so desperate to earn an Academy Award for House of Gucci that she spent the entire promotion attempting to persuade people that she became functionally Italian for a year and a half as preparation.
Additionally, there is Jared Leto, who chose to immerse himself in the character as the Joker (in Suicide Squad) through sending “horrifying” gifts to fellow cast members. These items, depending on who you ask, included deceased animals to intimate objects and used condoms, though the actor refuted the most extreme claims. Then, naturally, we have Jim Carrey, who immersed himself so fully as Andy Kaufman during Man on the Moon that they literally managed in creating a feature-length documentary from behind-the-scenes footage of him making life as impossible as he could for his colleagues.
The Modern Method Practitioners
The main Method Guy currently would appear to be Jeremy Strong (once Day-Lewis’s assistant), whose approach while filming Succession was so laboriously intensive that it formed the subject of a critical New Yorker profile, full of quotes from people who were either concerned for his behaviour (“The toll on himself concerns me,” remarked co-star Brian Cox) or extremely irritated by it (“I remember him causing others to react with exasperation,” stated an unnamed co-star).
Daniel Day-Lewis says he ‘did not plan to retire, truly’
There are so many other examples. Andrew Garfield went celibate for six months while preparing for Silence. Leonardo DiCaprio slept in a dead animal during The Revenant. It’s quite possible that 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 approaches his work.
A Noble But Uphill Battle
Moreover, while his fightback to critics of the Method might be noble, a short publicity tour may prove insufficient to change anyone’s mind, let alone their behaviour. Perhaps if he wants to remind people what method acting is, or to demonstrate its potential results, then the optimal strategy for Day-Lewis is to simply start making additional movies. Surely we could all get behind that.
