It’s been a long while since the public saw or heard from Daniel Day-Lewis. Following his announcement in 2017 declaring he would cease to pursue acting, prior to the debut of Phantom Thread, Day-Lewis withdrew from the spotlight. However, in his absence, his legend expanded further.
The Mythos Surrounding His Method
Primarily, this reputation revolves around his preferred approach to roles. As someone known for immerses himself in his characters – for example, during the Lincoln biopic, he had the director call him “Mr. President” for the entire production – audiences has become more fascinated with his process. Did he really send messages to co-star Sally Field in character as Lincoln? Did he consumed solely animals he’d killed for The Last of the Mohicans? Did he insist on receiving food via spoon while filming My Left Foot?
Extreme acting methods: has the public lost interest with actorly excess?
Now, Day-Lewis has returned to public attention, somewhat reluctantly, promoting his latest movie Anemone. And he is taking this chance to vocalise his frustration regarding how method acting is viewed. “I’m a little cross these days to hear all kinds of people talking carelessly and saying things like ‘fully embraced the Method’, which seems suggests that someone is behaving like a lunatic in an extreme fashion,” he stated to the New York Times. “Everyone often concentrate on the less important details of the work, and those details typically include some sort of self-punishment or an experience that causes a severe discomfort or mental instability. But of course, in the life for a performer, it has to principally be about the internal work.”
An Industry of Imitators
To be honest, this sounds like the actor has emerged from seclusion only to discover aghast at the acting community that has been created in his image. When you are widely considered among the best actors in history, and your approach includes striking a prop until you break your nose (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 attempt to emulate that example by trying to mimic your hero.
In other words, we now live in a landscape populated by imperfect imitators of Day-Lewis who want nothing more than to demonstrate the sheer amount of dedication they put into a character. At the shallow end of the pool we have people like Lady Gaga, who was so desperate to win an Oscar with House of Gucci that she spent the whole campaign attempting to persuade people that she became functionally Italian for a year and a half as preparation.
Then we have Jared Leto, who chose to deeply embed himself into the role as the Joker (in Suicide Squad) by sending “horrifying” presents to fellow cast members. These, according to various accounts, range from deceased animals to anal beads and used condoms, though the actor refuted those worst excesses. Then, of course, we have Jim Carrey, who immersed himself so fully as Andy Kaufman for Man on the Moon that they literally managed in creating a feature-length documentary out of B-roll of him making life as impossible as he could for everyone around him.
Contemporary Followers of the Method
The main practitioner of the Method at the moment seems to be Jeremy Strong (formerly an assistant to Day-Lewis), whose approach while filming Succession was so laboriously intensive that it formed the basis of a critical New Yorker profile, including statements from people who were either concerned about his conduct (“It’s the cost on himself that worries me,” remarked Brian Cox) or extremely irritated by it (“I remember [him] making others to react with exasperation,” stated an anonymous cast member).
Daniel Day-Lewis claims he ‘never intended to stop acting, truly’
There are so many other examples. 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 Austin Butler continues to talk like Elvis Presley, three years after the movie’s release. All of this, to some extent, is meant to invoke the seriousness with which Day-Lewis approaches his craft.
An Admirable Yet Challenging Battle
And, while his fightback to critics of the Method could be commendable, a brief promotional cycle may prove insufficient to change anyone’s mind, not to mention their practices. Perhaps if he wants to remind people what method acting is, or to show them what it can achieve, then Day-Lewis’s best bet is to simply begin producing additional movies. Certainly everyone would get behind that.
