It has been a long while since the public caught a glimpse of the acclaimed actor Daniel Day-Lewis. After he statement in 2017 declaring he would cease to pursue acting, just before the debut of The Phantom Thread, Day-Lewis withdrew from the spotlight. However, in his absence, his reputation expanded further.
The Legend Surrounding His Method
Largely, this legend centers on his favored style of working. Being an actor known for immerses himself in his characters – for example, while filming the Lincoln biopic, he had Steven Spielberg address him as “Mr President” for the entire production – audiences has grown increasingly obsessed with how he works. Is it true he really send texts to Sally Field as Abraham Lincoln? Was it accurate that he only eat animals he’d killed during Last of the Mohicans? Did he demand being spoon-fed while filming My Left Foot?
Extreme acting methods: have we lost interest with actorly excess?
Currently, Daniel Day-Lewis is back in the limelight, somewhat reluctantly, for his new film Anemone. He is taking this chance to vocalise his frustration at how the Method technique is viewed. “I am somewhat annoyed these days when I hear all kinds of people gobbling off and saying things like ‘gone full method’, which I think is meant to imply that a person’s acting insane in an extreme fashion,” he stated to the New York Times. “Everyone tends to focus on the less important details of the work, and those details always seem to involve some sort of self-flagellation or a situation that imposes upon oneself a severe discomfort or psychological strain. However, in the career for a performer, it must principally be about the inner transformation.”
An Industry Full of Followers
To be honest, this sounds like Day-Lewis has come out from his retreat and found himself aghast at the world that has developed mirroring his methods. If you’re widely considered among the best performers to ever work, and your process involves headbutting a dummy to the point of injury (in Gangs of New York) or spending two days in isolation deprived of sustenance (for In the Name of the Father), then it stands to reason that fellow performers will want to fill that vacuum by imitating their idol.
Essentially, we exist in an environment populated by imperfect Day-Lewis impersonators who want nothing more than to show the world the sheer amount of effort they invest in 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 whole campaign attempting to persuade people that she transformed into functionally Italian for a year and a half as preparation.
Additionally, there is Jared Leto, who decided to deeply embed himself into the role as the Joker (for Suicide Squad) through sending “disturbing” gifts to fellow cast members. These items, according to various accounts, included dead pigs and rats to intimate objects and personal hygiene products, though the actor refuted those worst excesses. And then, naturally, we have Jim Carrey, who immersed himself so fully into Andy Kaufman during Man on the Moon that they literally managed to get a feature-length documentary out of B-roll of him causing difficulties as impossible as he could for his colleagues.
The Modern Followers of the Method
The foremost practitioner of the Method currently seems to be Jeremy Strong (once Day-Lewis’s assistant), whose approach during Succession was so rigorously detailed that it formed the subject of a derisive magazine feature, including statements from individuals who were either concerned about his conduct (“The toll on himself concerns me,” said co-star Brian Cox) or extremely irritated by his actions (“I remember him causing others to react with exasperation,” stated an unnamed co-star).
The actor claims he ‘never intended to stop acting, really’
We have numerous additional cases. Andrew Garfield abstained from sex over half a year for Silence. Leonardo DiCaprio rested inside a dead animal for The Revenant. There’s a fighting chance that Austin Butler still speaks like Elvis Presley, three years after that film came out. All of this, to some extent, aims to evoke the seriousness with which Day-Lewis takes his work.
An Admirable But Uphill Battle
And, although his rebuttal against method detractors might be noble, a short publicity tour might not be enough to change anyone’s mind, let alone their practices. Perhaps if he wishes 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. Certainly we could all support that idea.
