It’s been a long while since anyone saw or heard from Daniel Day-Lewis. After he announcement in 2017 declaring he would cease to pursue acting, prior to the debut of Phantom Thread, the actor withdrew from the spotlight. However, during his hiatus, his legend expanded further.
The Legend of His Method
Largely, this legend revolves around his favored approach to roles. As someone who famously disappears into his characters – for instance, during Lincoln, reportedly asked the director address him as “Mr President” for the entire production – the world has become more fascinated with his process. Did he actually sent texts to Sally Field as Abraham Lincoln? Was it accurate that he only eat game he hunted for Last of the Mohicans? Did he insist on being spoon-fed for My Left Foot?
Madness in their method: has the public fallen out of love with over-the-top performances?
Now, Daniel Day-Lewis is back in the limelight, somewhat reluctantly, promoting his latest movie Anemone. And he is using this to express his anger regarding how method acting is perceived. “I’m a little cross these days to 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 behaving like a lunatic in a drastic way,” he told the New York Times. “People often concentrate on the less important aspects of acting, and these elements typically include some sort of self-punishment or a situation that causes extreme unease or mental instability. However, in the life of an actor, it must mainly focus on the inner transformation.”
A World Full of Followers
Frankly, it appears as if Day-Lewis has emerged from his retreat only to discover shocked by the acting community that has developed mirroring his methods. If you’re regarded as among the best actors in history, and your approach includes headbutting a dummy until you break your nose (in Gangs of New York) or enduring 48 hours in solitary confinement deprived of sustenance (for In the Name of the Father), it’s natural that other actors will want to fill that vacuum by imitating your hero.
Essentially, we exist in a landscape full of imperfect imitators of Day-Lewis who want nothing more than to demonstrate the sheer amount 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 win an Oscar with House of Gucci that she spent the entire promotion trying to convince everyone that she transformed into functionally Italian over 18 months as preparation.
Then we have Jared Leto, who decided to immerse himself in the character as the Joker (for Suicide Squad) through sending “horrifying” presents to fellow cast members. These, according to various accounts, included dead pigs and rats to intimate objects and personal hygiene products, although Leto denied those worst excesses. And then, of course, we have Jim Carrey, who went so deep as Andy Kaufman for Man on the Moon that filmmakers literally managed to get a full-length documentary from behind-the-scenes footage of him causing difficulties as impossible as he could for his colleagues.
Contemporary Method Practitioners
The main practitioner of the Method at the moment seems to be Jeremy Strong (once Day-Lewis’s assistant), whose process during Succession was so rigorously detailed that it formed the subject of a critical New Yorker profile, including statements from people who were either concerned for his behaviour (“The toll to himself that worries me,” said Brian Cox) or extremely irritated by it (“I remember him causing others roll their eyes,” stated an anonymous cast member).
The actor claims he ‘never intended to stop acting, really’
We have numerous additional cases. Andrew Garfield went celibate for six months for Silence. Leonardo DiCaprio slept in a dead animal during The Revenant. There’s a fighting chance that actor Austin Butler continues to talk like Elvis Presley, three years after the movie’s release. Each of these instances, to some extent, aims to evoke the dedication in which Day-Lewis takes his work.
A Noble But Uphill Battle
And, while his fightback against method detractors might be noble, a brief promotional cycle may prove insufficient to change anyone’s mind, not to mention their practices. Maybe if he wishes to remind people the true essence of the Method, or to show them what it can achieve, then the optimal strategy for Day-Lewis is to simply start making additional movies. Certainly we could all support that idea.
