It has been a long while since the public caught a glimpse of the acclaimed actor Daniel Day-Lewis. After he statement in 2017 declaring he would cease to pursue acting, just before the release of The Phantom Thread, Day-Lewis withdrew from the spotlight. However, in his absence, his legend has only grown.
The Legend Surrounding His Acting Method
Primarily, this reputation revolves around his favored approach to roles. Being an actor who famously disappears into his characters – for example, during the Lincoln biopic, reportedly asked Steven Spielberg address him as “Mr President” throughout the shoot – audiences has grown increasingly obsessed with his process. Did he really send texts to Sally Field in character as Lincoln? Was it accurate that he consumed solely animals he’d killed during The Last of the Mohicans? And did he insist on being spoon-fed while filming My Left Foot?
Madness in their method: has the public lost interest with actorly excess?
Currently, Daniel Day-Lewis is back to public attention, with some hesitation, promoting his latest movie Anemone. And he is taking this chance to express his frustration at how method acting is viewed. “I am somewhat annoyed nowadays when I hear various individuals gobbling off and saying things like ‘fully embraced the Method’, which I think is meant to imply that someone is behaving like a lunatic in a drastic way,” he told a major publication. “People tends to focus on superficial details of the work, and those details always seem to involve some form of self-punishment or a situation that causes a severe discomfort or psychological strain. But of course, in the life of an actor, it must principally be about the internal work.”
An Industry of Imitators
To be honest, this sounds like the actor has come out from seclusion and found himself aghast at the acting community that has developed in his image. If you’re regarded as one of the greatest performers in history, and your process includes striking a prop to the point of injury (in Gangs of New York) or enduring two days in solitary confinement without food or water (during In the Name of the Father), then it stands to reason that other actors will want to fill that vacuum by trying to mimic your hero.
Essentially, we exist in an environment 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 this trend there are performers such as Lady Gaga, who was so desperate to earn an Academy Award for House of Gucci that she spent the entire promotion attempting to persuade people that she became an Italian native for a year and a half in preparation.
Then we have Jared Leto, who decided to deeply embed himself into the role of the Joker (in Suicide Squad) by sending “disturbing” gifts to his castmates. These, according to various accounts, range from deceased animals to intimate objects and used condoms, though the actor refuted those worst excesses. And then, naturally, there is Jim Carrey, who immersed himself so fully into Andy Kaufman for Man on the Moon that filmmakers succeeded to get a feature-length documentary out of B-roll of him making life as impossible as he could for his colleagues.
The Modern Method Practitioners
The main practitioner of the Method currently seems to be Jeremy Strong (once an assistant to Day-Lewis), whose approach while filming Succession was so rigorously detailed that it became the subject of a critical New Yorker profile, including statements from people who were worried for his behaviour (“It’s the cost on himself that worries me,” remarked Brian Cox) or annoyed beyond all measure by his actions (“I remember him causing everyone else roll their eyes,” stated an anonymous cast member).
The actor claims he ‘never intended to stop acting, really’
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 Austin Butler still speaks in the style of Elvis, three years after the movie’s release. All of this, to some extent, aims to evoke the dedication with which Day-Lewis approaches his craft.
A Noble Yet Challenging Fight
And, while his fightback to critics of the Method could be commendable, a brief promotional cycle might not be enough to change anyone’s mind, not to mention their practices. Maybe if he wishes to remind people the true essence of the Method, or to demonstrate its potential results, then the optimal strategy for Day-Lewis is to simply start making more films. Surely we could all support that idea.
