It has been quite some time since anyone saw or heard from the acclaimed actor Daniel Day-Lewis. After he statement in 2017 that he would no longer pursue acting, prior to the debut of The Phantom Thread, Day-Lewis quietly faded from view. However, during his hiatus, his legend expanded further.
The Mythos of His Acting Method
Primarily, this legend revolves around his preferred approach to roles. As someone known for immerses himself in the roles he plays – for example, during Lincoln, he had Steven Spielberg address him as “Mr. President” for the entire production – audiences has grown more fascinated with how he works. Is it true he really send messages to co-star Sally Field in character as Lincoln? Was it accurate that he consumed solely game he hunted for The Last of the Mohicans? And did he demand being spoon-fed while filming 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, with some hesitation, for his new film Anemone. And he is using this to vocalise his frustration at how the Method technique is perceived. “I am somewhat annoyed nowadays to hear various individuals talking carelessly 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 stated to the New York Times. “Everyone tends to focus on superficial details of the work, and these elements always seem to involve some sort of self-punishment or a situation that imposes upon oneself a severe discomfort or psychological strain. However, in the career for a performer, it has to mainly focus on the internal work.”
An Industry Full of Followers
To be honest, it appears as if Day-Lewis has emerged from seclusion only to discover shocked by the world that has been created in his image. When you are widely considered one of the greatest performers in history, and your approach includes striking a prop until you break your nose (for Gangs of New York) or spending 48 hours in solitary confinement without food or water (during In the Name of the Father), it’s natural that fellow performers will attempt to fill that vacuum by trying to mimic your hero.
In other words, we exist in a landscape full of imperfect imitators of Day-Lewis who strive only to demonstrate the sheer amount of effort they put into their roles. 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 dedicated the entire promotion attempting to persuade people that she transformed into an Italian native over 18 months as preparation.
Then we have Jared Leto, who chose to immerse himself in the character as the Joker (for Suicide Squad) by sending “disturbing” presents to his castmates. These items, according to various accounts, included dead pigs and rats to anal beads and used condoms, although Leto denied the most extreme claims. And then, of course, there is Jim Carrey, who immersed himself so fully into Andy Kaufman during Man on the Moon that filmmakers succeeded 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 foremost Method Guy currently seems to be Jeremy Strong (formerly Day-Lewis’s assistant), whose process while filming Succession was so laboriously intensive that it became the subject of a critical New Yorker profile, including statements from individuals who were either concerned for his behaviour (“It’s the cost to himself concerns me,” remarked Brian Cox) or annoyed beyond all measure by his actions (“I recall [him] making everyone else roll their eyes,” said an unnamed co-star).
Daniel Day-Lewis claims he ‘did not plan to stop acting, really’
We have numerous additional cases. Andrew Garfield went celibate over half a year while preparing for Silence. Leonardo DiCaprio slept in a dead animal during The Revenant. It’s quite possible that actor Austin Butler still speaks in the style of Elvis, years following that film came out. Each of these instances, to some extent, is meant to invoke the dedication with which Day-Lewis approaches his work.
An Admirable But Uphill Battle
And, although his rebuttal to critics of the Method might be noble, a brief promotional cycle might not be enough to alter perceptions, let alone their behaviour. Maybe 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 additional movies. Certainly we could all get behind that.
