It’s been a long while since the public caught a glimpse of Daniel Day-Lewis. Following his statement in 2017 declaring he would cease to pursue acting, prior to the debut of Phantom Thread, the actor quietly faded from view. However, during his hiatus, his reputation expanded further.
The Mythos Surrounding His Acting Method
Primarily, this reputation centers on his preferred style of working. Being an actor who famously disappears into his characters – for example, while filming the Lincoln biopic, he had the director address him as “Mr President” throughout the shoot – the world has become increasingly obsessed with how he works. Did he really send texts to Sally Field as Abraham Lincoln? Was it accurate that he only eat animals he’d killed for The Last of the Mohicans? Did he insist on being spoon-fed for My Left Foot?
Extreme acting methods: have we lost interest with over-the-top performances?
Now, Daniel Day-Lewis is back in the limelight, with some hesitation, promoting his latest movie Anemone. And he is taking this chance to vocalise his anger regarding how the Method technique is viewed. “I am somewhat annoyed nowadays when I hear all kinds of people talking carelessly and using phrases like ‘gone full method’, which seems is meant to imply that a person’s acting insane in a drastic way,” he told a major publication. “People often concentrate on superficial details of the work, and those details always seem to involve some form of self-flagellation or a situation that imposes upon oneself a severe discomfort or mental instability. However, in the career of an actor, it must principally be about the internal work.”
An Industry Full of Followers
Frankly, this sounds as if the actor has come out from his retreat only to discover shocked by the world that has developed in his image. If you’re widely considered one of the greatest actors in history, and your process involves striking a prop until you break your nose (in Gangs of New York) or enduring two days in isolation without food or water (for In the Name of the Father), it’s natural that fellow performers will want to emulate that example by trying to mimic your hero.
In other words, we exist in a landscape populated by half-cocked Day-Lewis impersonators who want nothing more than to demonstrate the sheer amount of dedication they invest in a character. At the shallow end of the pool there are performers such as Lady Gaga, who was determined to win an Oscar for House of Gucci that she spent the entire promotion attempting to persuade people that she became an Italian native for a year and a half in preparation.
Additionally, there is Jared Leto, who chose to immerse himself in the character of the Joker (for Suicide Squad) by sending “horrifying” gifts to his castmates. These, depending on who you ask, included deceased animals to intimate objects and used condoms, although the actor refuted those worst excesses. And then, naturally, we have Jim Carrey, who immersed himself so fully as Andy Kaufman for Man on the Moon that they literally managed to get a full-length documentary from behind-the-scenes footage of him causing difficulties to the utmost for his colleagues.
Contemporary Followers of the Method
The main Method Guy currently seems to be Jeremy Strong (formerly an assistant to Day-Lewis), whose process while filming Succession was so laboriously intensive that it formed the basis of a derisive New Yorker profile, including statements from people who were worried about his conduct (“The toll on himself concerns me,” remarked Brian Cox) or extremely irritated by his actions (“I remember him causing others to react with exasperation,” stated an unnamed co-star).
The actor says he ‘did not plan to retire, really’
There are numerous additional cases. Andrew Garfield abstained from sex for six months for Silence. Leonardo DiCaprio rested inside a dead animal during The Revenant. There’s a fighting chance that Austin Butler still speaks in the style of Elvis, years following the movie’s release. All of this, in part, aims to evoke the seriousness with which Day-Lewis takes his craft.
An Admirable Yet Challenging Fight
And, although his rebuttal against method detractors could be commendable, a short publicity tour may prove insufficient to alter perceptions, not to mention their practices. Perhaps if he wishes to remind people what method acting is, or to show them what it can achieve, then the optimal strategy for Day-Lewis is to simply start making more films. Surely we could all get behind that.
