It’s been a long while since anyone saw or heard from Daniel Day-Lewis. Following his statement in 2017 declaring he would cease to work as an actor, just before the release of The Phantom Thread, Day-Lewis withdrew from the spotlight. However, during his hiatus, his reputation expanded further.
The Legend of His Acting Method
Primarily, this reputation centers on his favored approach to roles. As someone who famously disappears into the roles he plays – for example, while filming the Lincoln biopic, reportedly asked Steven Spielberg address him as “Mr President” for the entire production – the world has grown increasingly obsessed with his process. Did he really send texts to Sally Field in character as Lincoln? Did he only eat animals he’d killed for Last of the Mohicans? And did he insist on receiving food via spoon while filming My Left Foot?
Madness in their method: have we lost interest with actorly excess?
Currently, Daniel Day-Lewis has returned to public attention, somewhat reluctantly, promoting his latest movie Anemone. He is using this to express his anger at how the Method technique is perceived. “I am somewhat annoyed nowadays when I hear various individuals talking carelessly and saying things like ‘fully embraced the Method’, which I think suggests that a person’s behaving like a lunatic in a drastic way,” he stated to a major publication. “People often concentrate on the less important details of the work, and those details typically include some form of self-punishment or a situation that imposes upon oneself extreme unease or psychological strain. But of course, in the career of an actor, it has to principally be about the internal work.”
A World of Imitators
To be honest, this sounds as if the actor has come out from his retreat and found himself aghast at the world that has been created in his image. When you are widely considered among the best actors in history, and your process includes striking a prop to the point of injury (in Gangs of New York) or enduring 48 hours in solitary confinement deprived of sustenance (during In the Name of the Father), then it stands to reason that fellow performers will attempt to fill that vacuum by trying to mimic their idol.
In other words, we now live in a landscape full of imperfect imitators of Day-Lewis who strive only to show the world the extensive degree of effort they invest in their roles. On the milder side of this trend we have people like Lady Gaga, who was so desperate to earn an Academy Award with House of Gucci that she spent the entire promotion attempting to persuade people that she transformed into functionally Italian for a year and a half as preparation.
Additionally, there is Jared Leto, who chose to deeply embed himself into the role as the Joker (for Suicide Squad) by sending “horrifying” gifts to his castmates. These items, depending on who you ask, included dead pigs and rats to intimate objects and used condoms, although Leto denied 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 succeeded in creating a feature-length documentary from behind-the-scenes footage of him causing difficulties as impossible as he could for his colleagues.
Contemporary Method Practitioners
The foremost practitioner of the Method currently would appear to be Jeremy Strong (formerly an assistant to Day-Lewis), whose approach during Succession was so laboriously intensive that it formed the subject of a derisive New Yorker profile, full of quotes from people who were worried about his conduct (“It’s the cost to himself concerns me,” remarked Brian Cox) or annoyed beyond all measure by his actions (“I recall him causing others to react with exasperation,” stated an unnamed co-star).
The actor says he ‘never intended to stop acting, really’
We have numerous additional cases. Andrew Garfield abstained from sex for six months for Silence. Leonardo DiCaprio rested inside a dead animal during The Revenant. It’s quite possible that actor Austin Butler continues to talk like Elvis Presley, years following the movie’s release. All of this, in part, aims to evoke the seriousness in which Day-Lewis approaches his work.
An Admirable But Uphill Fight
Moreover, while his fightback to critics of the Method might be noble, a short publicity tour might not be enough to alter perceptions, not to mention their practices. Maybe if he wants to make audiences recall what method acting is, or to demonstrate what it can achieve, then the optimal strategy for Day-Lewis is to simply start making additional movies. Surely everyone would get behind that.
