It’s been a long while since the public saw or heard from Daniel Day-Lewis. After he statement in 2017 declaring he would cease to work as an actor, just before the release of Phantom Thread, Day-Lewis quietly faded from view. Yet, in his absence, his reputation has only grown.
The Legend Surrounding His Acting Method
Largely, this legend revolves around his preferred approach to roles. Being an actor who famously disappears into the roles he plays – for instance, during the Lincoln biopic, reportedly asked the director call him “Mr President” for the entire production – audiences has become increasingly obsessed with his process. Is it true he actually sent texts to Sally Field in character as Lincoln? Did he only eat animals he’d killed for The Last of the Mohicans? And did he insist on being spoon-fed while filming My Left Foot?
Madness in their method: has the public fallen out of love with over-the-top performances?
Currently, Daniel Day-Lewis is back in the limelight, somewhat reluctantly, promoting his latest movie Anemone. And he is taking this chance to express his anger at how method acting is viewed. “I’m a little cross these days to hear all kinds of people gobbling off and saying things like ‘fully embraced the Method’, which seems is meant to imply that a person’s behaving like a lunatic in an extreme fashion,” he told the New York Times. “People tends to focus on the less important details of the work, and these elements typically include some form of self-flagellation or a situation that imposes upon oneself extreme unease or psychological strain. However, in the life of an actor, it must mainly focus on the inner transformation.”
A World Full of Followers
Frankly, it appears like Day-Lewis has come out from his retreat and found himself shocked by the acting community that has been created in his image. If you’re regarded as one of the greatest performers in history, and your approach includes headbutting a dummy 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 other actors will attempt to emulate that example by trying to mimic your hero.
In other words, we now live in an environment full of half-cocked imitators of Day-Lewis who strive only to demonstrate the sheer amount of dedication they invest in a character. At the shallow end of the pool 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 trying to convince everyone that she transformed into functionally Italian over 18 months in preparation.
Additionally, there is Jared Leto, who decided to deeply embed himself in the character as the Joker (in Suicide Squad) by sending “disturbing” gifts to fellow cast members. These, according to various accounts, included dead pigs and rats to anal beads and personal hygiene products, although Leto denied those worst excesses. Then, naturally, there is Jim Carrey, who immersed himself so fully as Andy Kaufman during Man on the Moon that filmmakers succeeded to get a feature-length documentary out of B-roll of him making life to the utmost for his colleagues.
Contemporary Followers of the Method
The main practitioner of the Method currently seems to be Jeremy Strong (once Day-Lewis’s assistant), whose process during Succession was so rigorously detailed that it formed the subject of a critical New Yorker profile, full of quotes from people who were worried for his behaviour (“The toll to himself that worries me,” said Brian Cox) or extremely irritated by his actions (“I remember [him] making others roll their eyes,” stated an unnamed co-star).
The actor claims he ‘never intended to stop acting, truly’
There are numerous additional cases. Andrew Garfield went celibate for six months for Silence. Leonardo DiCaprio slept in a dead animal for The Revenant. It’s quite possible that actor Austin Butler still speaks 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 craft.
A Noble But Uphill Fight
And, while his fightback to critics of the Method might be noble, a short publicity tour may prove insufficient to change anyone’s mind, let alone their practices. Maybe if he wants to make audiences recall what method acting is, or to show them what it can achieve, then the optimal strategy for Day-Lewis is to just begin producing more films. Surely we could all support that idea.
