It has been a long while since anyone caught a glimpse of the acclaimed actor Daniel Day-Lewis. Following his statement in 2017 that he would no longer pursue acting, just before the debut of The Phantom Thread, the actor withdrew from the spotlight. Yet, in his absence, his legend has only grown.
The Legend Surrounding His Acting Method
Primarily, this reputation revolves around his favored style of working. As someone known for disappears into his characters – for example, while filming Lincoln, reportedly asked the director address him as “Mr President” for the entire production – the world has grown more fascinated with how he works. Is it true he really send messages to co-star Sally Field as Abraham Lincoln? Was it accurate that he only eat animals he’d killed during Last of the Mohicans? Did he demand being spoon-fed for My Left Foot?
Extreme acting methods: have we fallen out of love with actorly excess?
Now, Day-Lewis is back in the limelight, somewhat reluctantly, promoting his latest movie Anemone. And he is taking this chance to vocalise his anger at how method acting is perceived. “I’m a little cross these days when I hear all kinds of people talking carelessly and saying things like ‘fully embraced the Method’, which I think is meant to imply that someone is behaving like a lunatic in an extreme fashion,” he stated to the New York Times. “People often concentrate on superficial details of the work, and those details always seem to involve some sort of self-flagellation or an experience that imposes upon oneself extreme unease or mental instability. However, in the career for a performer, it has to mainly focus on the inner transformation.”
An Industry Full of Followers
Frankly, this sounds like Day-Lewis has emerged from his retreat only to discover shocked by the acting community that has developed mirroring his methods. When you are widely considered one of the greatest performers to ever work, and your approach involves headbutting a dummy to the point of injury (for Gangs of New York) or enduring 48 hours in solitary confinement without food or water (for In the Name of the Father), then it stands to reason that fellow performers will want to fill that vacuum by trying to mimic your hero.
Essentially, we exist in a landscape populated by half-cocked imitators of Day-Lewis who want nothing more than to show the world the sheer amount of dedication they invest in their roles. On the milder side of the pool there are performers such as Lady Gaga, who was determined 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 decided to immerse himself into the role as the Joker (for Suicide Squad) by sending “horrifying” gifts to fellow cast members. These, according to various accounts, included dead pigs and rats to intimate objects and personal hygiene products, though the actor refuted the most extreme claims. And then, of course, we have Jim Carrey, who went so deep into Andy Kaufman for Man on the Moon that they literally managed to get a full-length documentary out of B-roll of him causing difficulties to the utmost for everyone around him.
The Modern Method Practitioners
The foremost Method Guy at the moment would appear to be Jeremy Strong (once an assistant to Day-Lewis), whose process while filming Succession was so rigorously detailed that it became the basis of a derisive New Yorker profile, including statements from people who were either concerned about his conduct (“It’s the cost to himself concerns me,” remarked Brian Cox) or extremely irritated by it (“I remember [him] making others to react with exasperation,” stated an unnamed co-star).
Daniel Day-Lewis says he ‘did not plan to stop acting, really’
We have numerous additional cases. Andrew Garfield abstained from sex for six months while preparing for Silence. Leonardo DiCaprio slept in an animal carcass during The Revenant. There’s a fighting chance 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 dedication in which Day-Lewis takes his work.
An Admirable But Uphill Fight
Moreover, although his rebuttal to critics of the Method might be noble, a short publicity tour might not be enough to change anyone’s mind, let alone their practices. Maybe if he wants to make audiences recall what method acting is, or to demonstrate its potential results, then the optimal strategy for Day-Lewis is to simply start making more films. Surely everyone would get behind that.
