It’s been a long while since the public saw or heard from Daniel Day-Lewis. After he statement in 2017 declaring he would cease to pursue acting, prior to the release of Phantom Thread, Day-Lewis withdrew from the spotlight. Yet, during his hiatus, his reputation has only grown.
The Legend of His Method
Primarily, this reputation revolves around his preferred approach to roles. As someone known for disappears into the roles he plays – for example, during the Lincoln biopic, reportedly asked the director address him as “Mr President” for the entire production – the world has become increasingly obsessed with his process. Did he actually sent texts to Sally Field in character as Lincoln? Did he consumed solely game he hunted for Last of the Mohicans? And did he insist on receiving food via spoon while filming My Left Foot?
Extreme acting methods: has the public lost interest with over-the-top performances?
Now, Daniel Day-Lewis is back in the limelight, somewhat reluctantly, promoting his latest movie Anemone. And he is taking this chance to express his anger regarding how method acting is perceived. “I am somewhat annoyed nowadays to hear all kinds of people gobbling off and saying things like ‘gone full method’, which seems 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 the less important details of the work, and those details always seem to involve some sort of self-punishment or an experience that causes extreme unease or psychological strain. However, in the career for a performer, it has to principally be about the internal work.”
An Industry of Imitators
Frankly, this sounds like the actor has come out from his retreat only to discover shocked by the acting community that has been created in his image. If you’re regarded as one of the greatest actors to ever work, and your approach involves headbutting a dummy to the point of injury (in Gangs of New York) or enduring 48 hours in isolation deprived of sustenance (for 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 now live in a landscape populated by half-cocked Day-Lewis impersonators who want nothing more than to demonstrate the sheer amount of effort they invest in their roles. On the milder side of this trend there are performers such as 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 an Italian native for a year and a half as preparation.
Then we have Jared Leto, who decided to immerse himself in the character of the Joker (for Suicide Squad) by sending “horrifying” presents to fellow cast members. These, according to various accounts, range from dead pigs and rats to anal beads and used condoms, although Leto denied those worst excesses. Then, naturally, we have Jim Carrey, who immersed himself so fully as Andy Kaufman during Man on the Moon that they succeeded to get a full-length documentary out of B-roll of him making life as impossible as he could for everyone around him.
Contemporary Method Practitioners
The foremost practitioner of the Method currently would appear to be Jeremy Strong (formerly an assistant to Day-Lewis), whose process while filming Succession was so laboriously intensive that it became the subject of a critical New Yorker profile, full of quotes from individuals who were either concerned about his conduct (“The toll on himself that worries me,” remarked Brian Cox) or annoyed beyond all measure by his actions (“I remember him causing others to react with exasperation,” stated an unnamed co-star).
The actor says he ‘never intended to stop acting, truly’
There are so many other examples. Andrew Garfield abstained from sex over half a year while preparing for Silence. Leonardo DiCaprio slept in an animal carcass for The Revenant. It’s quite possible that actor Austin Butler still speaks like Elvis Presley, years following that film came out. All of this, in part, is meant to invoke the dedication in which Day-Lewis takes his craft.
An Admirable But Uphill Battle
And, while his fightback to critics of the Method might be noble, a brief promotional cycle may prove insufficient to change anyone’s mind, not to mention their behaviour. Perhaps if he wants to remind people the true essence of the Method, or to demonstrate its potential results, then Day-Lewis’s best bet is to simply start making additional movies. Certainly we could all get behind that.
