It has been quite some time since anyone saw or heard from the acclaimed actor Daniel Day-Lewis. Following his announcement in 2017 that he would no longer work as an actor, prior to the release of The Phantom Thread, Day-Lewis quietly faded from view. Yet, in his absence, his reputation expanded further.
The Mythos of His Method
Primarily, this legend revolves around his favored style of working. As someone known for disappears into the roles he plays – for example, while filming Lincoln, he had Steven Spielberg call him “Mr President” for the entire production – the world 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 during Last of the Mohicans? And did he insist on receiving food via spoon for My Left Foot?
Extreme acting methods: have we fallen out of love with actorly excess?
Now, Daniel Day-Lewis has returned to public attention, with some hesitation, promoting his latest movie Anemone. And he is using this to express his frustration regarding how method acting is perceived. “I’m a little cross these days to hear various individuals gobbling off and saying things like ‘gone full method’, which seems suggests 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-punishment or an experience that imposes upon oneself extreme unease or mental instability. But of course, in the career of an actor, it has to principally be about the internal work.”
A World Full of Followers
Frankly, it appears as if Day-Lewis has come out from his retreat and found himself shocked by the acting community that has been created mirroring his methods. If you’re widely considered among the best performers to ever work, and your approach includes headbutting a dummy until you break your nose (in Gangs of New York) or enduring two days in solitary confinement deprived of sustenance (during In the Name of the Father), then it stands to reason that fellow performers will want to emulate that example by imitating your hero.
In other words, we exist in a landscape full of imperfect Day-Lewis impersonators who strive only to show the world the sheer amount of dedication they put into a character. On the milder side of this trend we have people like Lady Gaga, who was so desperate to earn an Academy Award for House of Gucci that she spent the whole campaign attempting to persuade people that she transformed into functionally Italian for a year and a half in preparation.
Additionally, there is Jared Leto, who chose to deeply embed himself into the role as the Joker (for Suicide Squad) by sending “disturbing” presents to his castmates. These, depending on who you ask, range from dead pigs and rats to intimate objects and personal hygiene products, though Leto denied those worst excesses. Then, naturally, we have Jim Carrey, who immersed himself so fully into Andy Kaufman during Man on the Moon that filmmakers literally managed in creating a feature-length documentary out of B-roll of him causing difficulties to the utmost for his colleagues.
Contemporary Followers of the Method
The foremost Method Guy currently would appear to be Jeremy Strong (once Day-Lewis’s assistant), whose approach while filming Succession was so rigorously detailed that it formed the subject of a critical magazine feature, full of quotes from individuals who were either concerned for his behaviour (“It’s the cost to himself that worries me,” remarked co-star Brian Cox) or annoyed beyond all measure by it (“I remember him causing everyone else to react with exasperation,” said an unnamed co-star).
The actor says he ‘did not plan to stop acting, truly’
There are numerous additional cases. Andrew Garfield abstained from sex for six months while preparing 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 that film came out. Each of these instances, in part, aims to evoke the seriousness with which Day-Lewis takes his craft.
An Admirable But Uphill Fight
And, while his fightback to critics of the Method could be commendable, a brief promotional cycle may prove insufficient to change anyone’s mind, not to mention their practices. Maybe if he wants to remind people the true essence of the Method, or to show them what it can achieve, then the optimal strategy for Day-Lewis is to just begin producing more films. Surely everyone would get behind that.
