It’s been a long while since the public saw or heard from Daniel Day-Lewis. Following his announcement in 2017 that he would no longer pursue acting, prior to the release of Phantom Thread, the actor quietly faded from view. However, in his absence, his legend expanded further.
The Legend of His Method
Primarily, this reputation centers on his preferred style of working. As someone known for disappears into his characters – for example, during the Lincoln biopic, reportedly asked Steven Spielberg call him “Mr. President” throughout the shoot – audiences has grown increasingly obsessed with how he works. Did he actually sent messages to co-star Sally Field as Abraham Lincoln? Did he consumed solely game he hunted for The Last of the Mohicans? And did he demand being spoon-fed while filming My Left Foot?
Madness in their method: have we lost interest with actorly excess?
Currently, Daniel Day-Lewis is back to public attention, somewhat reluctantly, for his new film Anemone. And he is using this to vocalise his frustration at how method acting is perceived. “I’m a little cross these days to hear various individuals gobbling off and saying things like ‘fully embraced the Method’, which I think is meant to imply that a person’s behaving like a lunatic in a drastic way,” he told the New York Times. “Everyone tends to focus on the less important aspects of acting, and those details always seem to involve some form of self-punishment or an experience that imposes upon oneself extreme unease or psychological strain. However, in the life for a performer, it must principally be about the internal work.”
A World of Imitators
Frankly, this sounds like the actor has come out from seclusion and found himself aghast at the world that has been created in his image. If you’re regarded as one of the greatest performers to ever work, and your process includes headbutting a dummy until you break your nose (in Gangs of New York) or spending 48 hours in solitary confinement without food or water (during In the Name of the Father), it’s natural that other actors will want to emulate that example by imitating your hero.
Essentially, we now live in an environment full of half-cocked Day-Lewis impersonators who strive only to show the world the extensive degree of effort they put into their roles. At the shallow end of the pool there are performers such as Lady Gaga, who was so desperate to earn an Academy Award with House of Gucci that she spent the whole campaign trying to convince everyone that she transformed into functionally Italian for a year and a half in preparation.
Then we have Jared Leto, who decided to deeply embed himself in the character as the Joker (in Suicide Squad) through sending “horrifying” presents to fellow cast members. These items, depending on who you ask, included dead pigs and rats to intimate objects and personal hygiene products, though Leto denied those worst excesses. And then, naturally, we have Jim Carrey, who immersed himself so fully as Andy Kaufman for Man on the Moon that filmmakers succeeded in creating a full-length documentary from behind-the-scenes footage of him making life to the utmost for his colleagues.
Contemporary Method Practitioners
The main Method Guy at the moment would appear to be Jeremy Strong (formerly an assistant to Day-Lewis), whose approach during Succession was so rigorously detailed 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 concerns me,” remarked co-star Brian Cox) or extremely irritated by it (“I recall him causing others roll their eyes,” said an anonymous cast member).
Daniel Day-Lewis says he ‘did not plan to stop acting, truly’
We have numerous additional cases. Andrew Garfield went celibate over half a year for Silence. Leonardo DiCaprio slept in an animal carcass during The Revenant. There’s a fighting chance that actor Austin Butler continues to talk in the style of Elvis, three years after that film came out. All of this, in part, is meant to invoke the dedication with which Day-Lewis takes his craft.
A Noble But Uphill Battle
And, although his rebuttal against method detractors might be noble, a short publicity tour may prove insufficient to alter perceptions, not to mention their practices. Maybe if he wishes to make audiences recall what method acting is, or to show them its potential results, then Day-Lewis’s best bet is to just begin producing additional movies. Surely everyone would support that idea.
