It’s been quite some time since anyone saw or heard from Daniel Day-Lewis. After he announcement in 2017 declaring he would no longer pursue acting, just before the release of The Phantom Thread, the actor withdrew from the spotlight. However, in his absence, his legend expanded further.
The Legend Surrounding His Acting Method
Primarily, this legend centers on his favored approach to roles. As someone who famously disappears into the roles he plays – for example, during the Lincoln biopic, he had the director address him as “Mr. President” for the entire production – the world has grown increasingly obsessed with his process. Is it true he actually sent texts to Sally Field as Abraham Lincoln? Was it accurate that he only eat game he hunted for Last of the Mohicans? Did he demand being spoon-fed for My Left Foot?
Madness in their method: has the public lost interest with actorly excess?
Currently, Day-Lewis is back to public attention, somewhat reluctantly, promoting his latest movie Anemone. He is taking this chance to vocalise his anger at how the Method technique is viewed. “I’m a little cross nowadays when I hear various individuals gobbling off and using phrases like ‘gone full method’, which seems is meant to imply that a person’s acting insane in a drastic way,” he stated to a major publication. “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 an experience that imposes upon oneself extreme unease or psychological strain. But of course, in the career for a performer, it has to mainly focus on the internal work.”
A World Full of Followers
To be honest, this sounds as if the actor has come out from his retreat only to discover aghast at the world that has been created mirroring his methods. When you are widely considered among the best actors in history, and your approach involves headbutting a dummy until you break your nose (in Gangs of New York) or enduring 48 hours in isolation without food or water (during In the Name of the Father), it’s natural that other actors will want to fill that vacuum by imitating your hero.
Essentially, we exist in a landscape full of half-cocked Day-Lewis impersonators who strive only to demonstrate the sheer amount of effort they invest in 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 dedicated the entire promotion attempting to persuade people that she transformed into functionally Italian for a year and a half in preparation.
Additionally, there is Jared Leto, who chose to immerse himself in the character as the Joker (for Suicide Squad) by sending “horrifying” presents to fellow cast members. These items, depending on who you ask, range from dead pigs and rats to intimate objects and used condoms, although Leto denied the most extreme claims. And then, of course, we have Jim Carrey, who immersed himself so fully as Andy Kaufman during Man on the Moon that they literally managed to get a feature-length documentary from behind-the-scenes footage of him causing difficulties as impossible as he could for his colleagues.
Contemporary Followers of the Method
The main practitioner of the Method currently seems to be Jeremy Strong (once an assistant to Day-Lewis), whose approach while filming Succession was so laboriously intensive that it became the subject of a derisive magazine feature, full of quotes from people who were worried for his behaviour (“The toll to himself concerns me,” remarked co-star Brian Cox) or extremely irritated by it (“I recall him causing everyone else to react with exasperation,” stated an anonymous cast member).
Daniel Day-Lewis claims he ‘did not plan to stop acting, really’
There are so many other examples. Andrew Garfield went celibate over half a year for Silence. Leonardo DiCaprio slept in a dead animal during The Revenant. There’s a fighting chance that Austin Butler continues to talk in the style of Elvis, years following that film came out. All of this, in part, aims to evoke the seriousness with which Day-Lewis takes his work.
An Admirable Yet Challenging Fight
And, although his rebuttal against method detractors might be noble, a short publicity tour might not be enough to change anyone’s mind, not to mention their practices. Maybe if he wishes 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 more films. Surely everyone would support that idea.
