It’s been quite some time since anyone saw or heard from Daniel Day-Lewis. After he announcement in 2017 that he would no longer work as an actor, prior to the debut of The Phantom Thread, Day-Lewis withdrew from the spotlight. Yet, in his absence, his legend expanded further.
The Legend of His Method
Largely, this legend centers on his favored style of working. As someone known for disappears into his characters – for instance, during the Lincoln biopic, reportedly asked the director address him as “Mr President” throughout the shoot – the world has become increasingly obsessed with his process. Did he really send messages to co-star Sally Field as Abraham Lincoln? Was it accurate that he consumed solely game he hunted during The Last of the Mohicans? And did he demand being spoon-fed for My Left Foot?
Madness in their method: has the public fallen out of love with actorly excess?
Currently, Day-Lewis has returned in the limelight, somewhat reluctantly, promoting his latest movie Anemone. And he is using this to express his frustration at how method acting 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 behaving like a lunatic in a drastic way,” he told a major publication. “People often concentrate on superficial 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 mainly focus on the inner transformation.”
A World Full of Followers
To be honest, it appears like Day-Lewis has come out from seclusion and found himself aghast at the acting community that has been created mirroring his methods. When you are widely considered among the best actors to ever work, and your process includes headbutting a dummy until you break your nose (in Gangs of New York) or enduring 48 hours in isolation without food or water (for In the Name of the Father), it’s natural that fellow performers will want to fill that vacuum by trying to mimic your hero.
In other words, we now live in an environment full of half-cocked Day-Lewis impersonators who want nothing more than to show the world the sheer amount of effort they invest in their roles. At the shallow end of the pool we have people like Lady Gaga, who was determined to win an Oscar with House of Gucci that she dedicated the whole campaign attempting to persuade people that she became functionally Italian for a year and a half in preparation.
Then we have Jared Leto, who chose to deeply embed himself into the role of the Joker (in Suicide Squad) by sending “disturbing” gifts to fellow cast members. These items, depending on who you ask, included deceased animals to anal beads and used condoms, though the actor refuted the most extreme claims. Then, of course, there is Jim Carrey, who went so deep as Andy Kaufman during Man on the Moon that filmmakers literally managed to get a feature-length documentary from behind-the-scenes footage of him causing difficulties as impossible as he could for everyone around him.
Contemporary Method Practitioners
The main Method Guy at the moment seems to be Jeremy Strong (once Day-Lewis’s assistant), whose approach during Succession was so laboriously intensive that it became the basis of a critical New Yorker profile, full of quotes from individuals who were worried about his conduct (“The toll on himself that worries me,” said co-star Brian Cox) or annoyed beyond all measure by it (“I remember [him] making everyone else roll their eyes,” stated an anonymous cast member).
Daniel Day-Lewis says he ‘never intended to stop acting, truly’
There are numerous additional cases. Andrew Garfield went celibate over half a year for Silence. Leonardo DiCaprio rested inside a dead animal during The Revenant. It’s quite possible that Austin Butler continues to talk in the style of Elvis, three years after the movie’s release. Each of these instances, to some extent, is meant to invoke the seriousness in which Day-Lewis approaches his work.
A Noble Yet Challenging Fight
And, although his rebuttal to critics of the Method could be commendable, a short publicity tour may prove insufficient to change anyone’s mind, let alone their behaviour. 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 start making more films. Certainly everyone would get behind that.
