It’s been quite some time since anyone saw or heard from the acclaimed actor Daniel Day-Lewis. Following his announcement in 2017 declaring he would no longer pursue acting, prior to the release of The Phantom Thread, the actor quietly faded from view. Yet, during his hiatus, his legend has only grown.
The Legend of His Acting Method
Primarily, this reputation centers on his preferred style of working. 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 – audiences has become increasingly obsessed with his process. Did he actually sent texts to Sally Field as Abraham Lincoln? Was it accurate that he consumed solely animals he’d killed for Last of the Mohicans? Did he demand being spoon-fed for My Left Foot?
Extreme acting methods: has the public lost interest with actorly excess?
Now, Daniel Day-Lewis has returned to public attention, with some hesitation, for his new film 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 using phrases like ‘fully embraced the Method’, which seems is meant to imply that someone is acting insane in an extreme fashion,” he stated to a major publication. “People often concentrate on superficial aspects of acting, and those details typically include some form of self-punishment or a situation that imposes upon oneself a severe discomfort or mental instability. However, in the life for a performer, it has to mainly focus on the inner transformation.”
A World of Imitators
Frankly, it appears as if Day-Lewis has come out from seclusion and found himself aghast at the world that has been created in his image. If you’re regarded as one of the greatest performers to ever work, and your approach includes striking a prop to the point of injury (for Gangs of New York) or spending 48 hours in solitary confinement without food or water (during In the Name of the Father), then it stands to reason that fellow performers will want to fill that vacuum by trying to mimic your hero.
In other words, we now live in a landscape populated by imperfect imitators of Day-Lewis who strive only to show the world the sheer amount of dedication they put into a character. On the milder side of this trend there are performers such as Lady Gaga, who was determined to win an Oscar with House of Gucci that she dedicated the whole campaign attempting to persuade people that she became functionally Italian for a year and a half in preparation.
Then we have Jared Leto, who chose to deeply embed himself into the role of the Joker (for Suicide Squad) through sending “disturbing” gifts to his castmates. These, according to various accounts, included dead pigs and rats to intimate objects and personal hygiene products, though Leto denied the most extreme claims. And then, naturally, we have Jim Carrey, who went so deep as Andy Kaufman for Man on the Moon that they literally managed to get a feature-length documentary out of B-roll of him making life as impossible as he could for everyone around him.
Contemporary Method Practitioners
The main practitioner of the Method currently seems to be Jeremy Strong (formerly Day-Lewis’s assistant), whose approach while filming Succession was so laboriously intensive that it became the subject of a derisive New Yorker profile, including statements from people who were either concerned for his behaviour (“It’s the cost to himself that worries me,” remarked Brian Cox) or extremely irritated by it (“I recall him causing everyone else to react with exasperation,” said an unnamed co-star).
The actor claims he ‘did not plan to retire, really’
We have so many other examples. Andrew Garfield went celibate over half a year while preparing for Silence. Leonardo DiCaprio rested inside 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. All of this, in part, aims to evoke the seriousness with which Day-Lewis takes his work.
A Noble But Uphill Fight
Moreover, although his rebuttal to critics of the Method might be noble, a short publicity tour might not be enough to change anyone’s mind, not to mention their behaviour. Perhaps if he wants to remind people the true essence of the Method, or to demonstrate its potential results, then the optimal strategy for Day-Lewis is to simply start making more films. Surely everyone would get behind that.
