It has been a long while since anyone caught a glimpse of the acclaimed actor Daniel Day-Lewis. Following his statement in 2017 declaring he would cease to pursue acting, just before the debut of Phantom Thread, the actor withdrew from the spotlight. Yet, in his absence, his legend has only grown.
The Legend of His Acting Method
Largely, this legend centers on his favored style of working. Being an actor who famously immerses himself in his characters – for instance, during Lincoln, he had Steven Spielberg address him as “Mr. President” for the entire production – the world has grown increasingly obsessed with how he works. Is it true he actually sent messages to co-star Sally Field as Abraham Lincoln? Did he only eat animals he’d killed for The Last of the Mohicans? Did he insist on being spoon-fed for My Left Foot?
Madness in their method: has the public fallen out of love with actorly excess?
Currently, Daniel Day-Lewis has returned in the limelight, with some hesitation, for his new film Anemone. He is taking this chance to express his anger at how the Method technique is perceived. “I am somewhat annoyed nowadays to hear all kinds of people talking carelessly and using phrases like ‘gone full method’, which I think is meant to imply that a person’s behaving like a lunatic in an extreme fashion,” he told a major publication. “People tends to focus on superficial details of the work, and these elements always seem to involve some form of self-punishment or an experience that causes extreme unease or mental instability. However, in the life of an actor, it must principally be about the inner transformation.”
An Industry of Imitators
Frankly, it appears as if the actor has come out from his retreat only to discover aghast at the acting community that has developed mirroring his methods. When you are widely considered one of the greatest performers in history, and your approach involves striking a prop until you break your nose (in Gangs of New York) or enduring two days in solitary confinement without food or water (for In the Name of the Father), it’s natural that other actors will want to emulate that example by imitating your hero.
In other words, we now live in a landscape populated by imperfect Day-Lewis impersonators who strive only to demonstrate the extensive degree of dedication they put into a character. At the shallow end of the pool there are performers such as Lady Gaga, who was so desperate to win an Oscar with House of Gucci that she spent the whole campaign trying to convince everyone that she became functionally Italian for a year and a half as preparation.
Then we have Jared Leto, who decided to immerse himself in the character of the Joker (for Suicide Squad) through sending “horrifying” gifts to his castmates. These, according to various accounts, included dead pigs and rats to intimate objects and used condoms, though the actor refuted the most extreme claims. And then, of course, there is Jim Carrey, who went so deep as Andy Kaufman for Man on the Moon that filmmakers succeeded in creating a full-length documentary from behind-the-scenes footage of him causing difficulties as impossible as he could for his colleagues.
The Modern Method Practitioners
The main Method Guy currently would appear to be Jeremy Strong (once Day-Lewis’s assistant), whose process while filming Succession was so rigorously detailed that it formed the basis of a critical New Yorker profile, full of quotes from individuals who were either concerned about his conduct (“It’s the cost on himself concerns me,” remarked Brian Cox) or extremely irritated by it (“I remember [him] making everyone else roll their eyes,” said an unnamed co-star).
The actor says he ‘did not plan to retire, really’
We have numerous additional cases. Andrew Garfield abstained from sex over half a year while preparing 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, three years after the movie’s release. All of this, in part, is meant to invoke the dedication in which Day-Lewis takes his craft.
An Admirable But Uphill Fight
Moreover, while his fightback to critics of the Method might be noble, a brief promotional cycle might not be enough to change anyone’s mind, not to mention their practices. Perhaps if he wants to make audiences recall the true essence of the Method, or to demonstrate what it can achieve, then the optimal strategy for Day-Lewis is to simply start making more films. Certainly everyone would support that idea.
