It’s been quite some time since the public caught a glimpse of Daniel Day-Lewis. Following his statement in 2017 declaring he would no longer work as an actor, prior to the debut of The Phantom Thread, the actor withdrew from the spotlight. Yet, during his hiatus, his legend expanded further.
The Mythos of His Method
Primarily, this reputation centers on his preferred approach to roles. Being an actor who famously immerses himself in his characters – for instance, while filming Lincoln, reportedly asked the director call him “Mr President” for the entire production – audiences has become increasingly obsessed with how he works. Is it true he actually sent texts to Sally Field in character as Lincoln? Did he only eat animals he’d killed during The Last of the Mohicans? Did he insist on receiving food via spoon while filming My Left Foot?
Madness in their method: has the public fallen out of love with actorly excess?
Now, Day-Lewis is back in the limelight, with some hesitation, promoting his latest movie Anemone. He is taking this chance to express his anger at how method acting is perceived. “I’m a little cross nowadays when I hear all kinds of people talking carelessly and saying things like ‘gone full method’, which seems suggests that a person’s acting insane in an extreme fashion,” he told a major publication. “Everyone tends to focus on superficial aspects of acting, and these elements always seem to involve some form of self-flagellation or a situation that causes extreme unease or mental instability. However, in the career of an actor, it must principally be about the inner transformation.”
An Industry of Imitators
Frankly, this sounds as if Day-Lewis has come out from his retreat only to discover aghast at the acting community that has been created in his image. When you are regarded as one of the greatest actors to ever work, and your approach involves striking a prop to the point of injury (for Gangs of New York) or spending two days in solitary confinement deprived of sustenance (during In the Name of the Father), then it stands to reason that other actors will attempt to emulate that example by trying to mimic your hero.
In other words, we now live in an environment populated by half-cocked Day-Lewis impersonators who want nothing more than to show the world the sheer amount of dedication they put into a character. On the milder side 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 entire promotion trying to convince everyone that she became functionally Italian for a year and a half in preparation.
Then we have Jared Leto, who decided to immerse himself into the role of the Joker (for Suicide Squad) through sending “disturbing” gifts to his castmates. These, according to various accounts, included deceased animals to intimate objects and used condoms, although the actor refuted the most extreme claims. And then, naturally, there is Jim Carrey, who immersed himself so fully as Andy Kaufman during Man on the Moon that they succeeded in creating a full-length documentary out of B-roll of him making life to the utmost for his colleagues.
Contemporary Method Practitioners
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 became the subject of a critical New Yorker profile, full of quotes from individuals who were either concerned for his behaviour (“It’s the cost to himself that worries me,” said Brian Cox) or extremely irritated by his actions (“I recall [him] making others roll their eyes,” said an unnamed co-star).
Daniel Day-Lewis claims he ‘did not plan to stop acting, really’
We have numerous additional cases. Andrew Garfield abstained from sex for six months while preparing for Silence. Leonardo DiCaprio slept in an animal carcass during The Revenant. It’s quite possible that actor Austin Butler continues to talk in the style of Elvis, three years after that film came out. All of this, in part, aims to evoke the dedication with which Day-Lewis approaches his work.
An Admirable But Uphill Fight
And, while his fightback to critics of the Method might be noble, a brief promotional cycle might not be enough to alter perceptions, not to mention their behaviour. Perhaps if he wishes to remind people the true essence of the Method, or to show them what it can achieve, then Day-Lewis’s best bet is to simply start making additional movies. Surely we could all get behind that.
