It’s been a long while since anyone caught a glimpse of the acclaimed actor Daniel Day-Lewis. After he announcement in 2017 declaring he would cease to work as an actor, prior to the release of Phantom Thread, Day-Lewis withdrew from the spotlight. However, in his absence, his reputation has only grown.
The Mythos of His Method
Largely, this legend revolves around his favored style of working. As someone known for disappears into his characters – for instance, while filming Lincoln, he had the director call him “Mr. President” for the entire production – the world has become more fascinated with how he works. Did he really send texts to Sally Field as Abraham Lincoln? Did he only eat animals he’d killed during Last of the Mohicans? Did he insist on being spoon-fed while filming My Left Foot?
Extreme acting methods: have we fallen out of love with over-the-top performances?
Currently, Daniel Day-Lewis is back to public attention, somewhat reluctantly, promoting his latest movie Anemone. And he is using this to express his frustration regarding how method acting is viewed. “I’m a little cross these days when I hear all kinds of people gobbling off and using phrases like ‘gone full method’, which seems suggests that someone is acting insane in a drastic way,” he told a major publication. “People tends to focus on the less important details of the work, and those details typically include some form of self-punishment or an experience that causes extreme unease or mental instability. But of course, in the career of an actor, it must mainly focus on the internal work.”
A World Full of Followers
Frankly, this sounds like Day-Lewis has come out from his retreat and found himself shocked by the world that has developed mirroring his methods. If you’re regarded as among the best actors in history, and your process includes striking a prop until you break your nose (for Gangs of New York) or enduring 48 hours in isolation without food or water (for In the Name of the Father), then it stands to reason that other actors will attempt to emulate that example by imitating their idol.
In other words, we now live in a landscape full of imperfect imitators of Day-Lewis who want nothing more than to demonstrate the extensive degree of effort they put into a character. At the shallow end 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 transformed into functionally Italian for a year and a half in preparation.
Then we have Jared Leto, who decided to immerse himself in the character as the Joker (in Suicide Squad) through sending “horrifying” presents to fellow cast members. These, depending on who you ask, included dead pigs and rats to anal beads and personal hygiene products, though the actor refuted the most extreme claims. And then, naturally, there is Jim Carrey, who immersed himself so fully into Andy Kaufman during Man on the Moon that they literally managed to get a full-length documentary from behind-the-scenes footage of him making life as impossible as he could for everyone around him.
The Modern Method Practitioners
The main Method Guy currently would appear to be Jeremy Strong (once an assistant to Day-Lewis), whose process during Succession was so rigorously detailed that it became the basis of a critical New Yorker profile, full of quotes from individuals who were either concerned about his conduct (“The toll on himself that worries me,” said co-star Brian Cox) or extremely irritated by it (“I recall him causing everyone else roll their eyes,” said an anonymous cast member).
Daniel Day-Lewis says he ‘never intended to retire, truly’
We have so many other examples. Andrew Garfield abstained from sex over half a year while preparing for Silence. Leonardo DiCaprio slept in an animal carcass for The Revenant. There’s a fighting chance that actor Austin Butler continues to talk in the style of Elvis, years following that film came out. All of this, to some extent, is meant to invoke the seriousness in which Day-Lewis approaches his craft.
A Noble But Uphill Fight
Moreover, although his rebuttal to critics of the Method might be noble, a short publicity tour may prove insufficient to alter perceptions, let alone their practices. Maybe if he wants to remind people what method acting is, or to demonstrate its potential results, then Day-Lewis’s best bet is to simply start making additional movies. Certainly everyone would support that idea.
