It’s been quite some time since the public saw or heard from Daniel Day-Lewis. Following his statement in 2017 declaring he would no longer pursue acting, just before the release of Phantom Thread, Day-Lewis withdrew from the spotlight. However, during his hiatus, his legend has only grown.
The Mythos of His Acting Method
Largely, this reputation centers on his preferred approach to roles. Being an actor known for disappears into the roles he plays – for example, during the Lincoln biopic, he had the director call him “Mr President” throughout the shoot – audiences has grown increasingly obsessed with how he works. Is it true he really send 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 receiving food via spoon while filming 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, for his new film Anemone. And he is taking this chance to vocalise his frustration at how the Method technique is viewed. “I am somewhat annoyed nowadays to hear various individuals gobbling off and using phrases like ‘gone full method’, which seems suggests that a person’s acting insane in a drastic way,” he told the New York Times. “Everyone often concentrate on superficial details of the work, and those details always seem to involve some form of self-flagellation or a situation that imposes upon oneself a severe discomfort or psychological strain. However, in the career for a performer, it must principally be about the inner transformation.”
A World of Imitators
To be honest, this sounds like the actor has come out from seclusion and found himself aghast at the world that has been created mirroring his methods. If you’re regarded as among the best performers to ever work, and your approach involves headbutting a dummy until you break your nose (in Gangs of New York) or spending two days in isolation deprived of sustenance (during In the Name of the Father), then it stands to reason that fellow performers will attempt to fill that vacuum by trying to mimic their idol.
Essentially, we now live in a landscape full of half-cocked imitators of Day-Lewis who want nothing more than to demonstrate the extensive degree of dedication they invest in their roles. At the shallow end of this trend there are performers such as Lady Gaga, who was so desperate to win an Oscar with House of Gucci that she dedicated the whole campaign attempting to persuade people that she became an Italian native over 18 months as preparation.
Additionally, there is Jared Leto, who chose to deeply embed himself in the character as the Joker (for Suicide Squad) by sending “horrifying” presents to his castmates. These, according to various accounts, included dead pigs and rats to anal beads and personal hygiene products, although Leto denied those worst excesses. And then, naturally, we have Jim Carrey, who went so deep as Andy Kaufman for Man on the Moon that they succeeded in creating a feature-length documentary out of B-roll of him causing difficulties as impossible as he could for his colleagues.
Contemporary Method Practitioners
The foremost Method Guy at the moment seems to be Jeremy Strong (formerly an assistant to Day-Lewis), whose approach during Succession was so rigorously detailed that it became the subject of a critical magazine feature, full of quotes from people who were worried about his conduct (“The toll to himself that worries me,” remarked co-star Brian Cox) or extremely irritated by his actions (“I recall him causing others roll their eyes,” stated an anonymous cast member).
Daniel Day-Lewis claims he ‘never intended to stop acting, truly’
There are numerous additional cases. Andrew Garfield went celibate for six months while preparing for Silence. Leonardo DiCaprio slept in a dead animal for The Revenant. There’s a fighting chance that actor Austin Butler still speaks in the style of Elvis, years following that film came out. All of this, in part, is meant to invoke the seriousness with which Day-Lewis takes his craft.
An Admirable But Uphill Battle
Moreover, while his fightback to critics of the Method might be noble, a brief promotional cycle may prove insufficient to alter perceptions, not to mention their practices. Perhaps if he wants to remind people what method acting is, or to show them what it can achieve, then the optimal strategy for Day-Lewis is to just start making additional movies. Certainly everyone would support that idea.
