It’s been a long while since the public saw or heard from the acclaimed actor Daniel Day-Lewis. After he announcement in 2017 declaring he would cease to pursue acting, prior to the release of Phantom Thread, the actor quietly faded from view. However, in his absence, his reputation has only grown.
The Legend of His Method
Largely, this legend revolves around his preferred approach to roles. Being an actor known for disappears into his characters – for instance, while filming the Lincoln biopic, he had the director address him as “Mr President” throughout the shoot – the world has become increasingly obsessed with his process. Is it true he actually sent messages to co-star Sally Field as Abraham Lincoln? Was it accurate that he consumed solely animals he’d killed for The Last of the Mohicans? Did he insist on being spoon-fed while filming My Left Foot?
Extreme acting methods: has the public fallen out of love with over-the-top performances?
Now, Day-Lewis is back to public attention, with some hesitation, promoting his latest movie Anemone. And he is using this to express his anger regarding how the Method technique is perceived. “I am somewhat annoyed these days when I hear various individuals gobbling off and using phrases like ‘fully embraced the Method’, which seems suggests that a person’s acting insane in an extreme fashion,” he told the New York Times. “People tends to focus on superficial details of the work, and those details typically include some sort of self-punishment or a situation that imposes upon oneself extreme unease or psychological strain. But of course, in the career for a performer, it must mainly focus on the inner transformation.”
A World Full of Followers
Frankly, this sounds like Day-Lewis has emerged from seclusion and found himself shocked by the world that has developed mirroring his methods. When you are widely considered among the best performers to ever work, and your process involves headbutting a dummy to the point of injury (for Gangs of New York) or spending 48 hours in isolation 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 trying to mimic their idol.
Essentially, we now live in a landscape full of imperfect imitators of Day-Lewis who want nothing more than to show the world the extensive degree of effort they put into a character. At the shallow end of the pool there are performers such as Lady Gaga, who was determined to win an Oscar for House of Gucci that she spent the whole campaign attempting to persuade people that she became functionally Italian for a year and a half as preparation.
Additionally, there is Jared Leto, who chose to immerse himself into the role of the Joker (for Suicide Squad) by sending “horrifying” presents to fellow cast members. These items, depending on who you ask, included deceased animals to anal beads and used condoms, though Leto denied those worst excesses. And then, of course, we have Jim Carrey, who immersed himself so fully into Andy Kaufman for Man on the Moon that filmmakers succeeded in creating a feature-length documentary out of B-roll of him making life as impossible as he could for everyone around him.
The Modern Method Practitioners
The foremost Method Guy at the moment seems to be Jeremy Strong (once Day-Lewis’s assistant), whose approach while filming Succession was so laboriously intensive that it formed the basis of a derisive New Yorker profile, including statements from individuals who were worried for his behaviour (“The toll to himself that worries me,” said Brian Cox) or annoyed beyond all measure by his actions (“I remember him causing everyone else roll their eyes,” stated an unnamed co-star).
Daniel Day-Lewis claims he ‘never intended to retire, truly’
We have so many other examples. Andrew Garfield went celibate for six months while preparing for Silence. Leonardo DiCaprio rested inside an animal carcass for The Revenant. There’s a fighting chance that Austin Butler still speaks like Elvis Presley, years following that film came out. Each of these instances, in part, aims to evoke the seriousness with which Day-Lewis approaches his work.
An Admirable But Uphill Battle
Moreover, although his rebuttal to critics of the Method might be noble, a short publicity tour may prove insufficient to change anyone’s mind, not to mention their behaviour. Perhaps if he wishes to remind people what method acting is, or to demonstrate its potential results, then Day-Lewis’s best bet is to simply begin producing additional movies. Certainly everyone would support that idea.
