It’s been a long while since anyone saw or heard from Daniel Day-Lewis. Following his statement in 2017 declaring he would no longer pursue acting, just before the release of The Phantom Thread, Day-Lewis quietly faded from view. Yet, during his hiatus, his reputation has only grown.
The Mythos Surrounding His Acting Method
Primarily, this legend revolves around his preferred approach to roles. As someone who famously disappears into the roles he plays – for example, during the Lincoln biopic, reportedly asked the director address him as “Mr. President” throughout the shoot – audiences has grown increasingly obsessed with how he works. Did he really send messages to co-star Sally Field in character as 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 for My Left Foot?
Madness in their method: 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. He is taking this chance to vocalise his frustration at how the Method technique is viewed. “I’m a little cross nowadays to hear various individuals gobbling off and saying things like ‘gone full method’, which seems is meant to imply that someone is acting insane in an extreme fashion,” he stated to the New York Times. “Everyone often concentrate on superficial details of the work, and these elements always seem to involve some form of self-punishment or an experience that imposes upon oneself extreme unease or psychological strain. But of course, in the life for a performer, it has to mainly focus on the internal work.”
A World of Imitators
To be honest, this sounds as if Day-Lewis has emerged from seclusion only to discover aghast at the world that has developed mirroring his methods. If you’re widely considered among the best actors to ever work, and your approach involves headbutting a dummy to the point of injury (for Gangs of New York) or enduring two days in solitary confinement without food or water (for In the Name of the Father), it’s natural that fellow performers will attempt to fill that vacuum by trying to mimic their idol.
In other words, we exist in an environment populated by half-cocked Day-Lewis impersonators who want nothing more than to show the world the sheer amount of effort they put into a character. At the shallow end of the pool there are performers such as 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 as preparation.
Additionally, there is Jared Leto, who chose to deeply embed himself in the character as the Joker (for Suicide Squad) through sending “disturbing” presents to his castmates. These items, depending on who you ask, included dead pigs and rats to intimate objects and used condoms, though Leto denied the most extreme claims. Then, naturally, we have Jim Carrey, who immersed himself so fully as Andy Kaufman for Man on the Moon that filmmakers succeeded to get a feature-length documentary out of B-roll of him making life to the utmost for everyone around him.
Contemporary Followers of the Method
The main Method Guy currently seems to be Jeremy Strong (once Day-Lewis’s assistant), whose process while filming Succession was so rigorously detailed that it formed the subject of a critical magazine feature, including statements from people who were either concerned for his behaviour (“It’s the cost on himself concerns me,” remarked Brian Cox) or annoyed beyond all measure by it (“I remember [him] making others roll their eyes,” said an unnamed co-star).
Daniel Day-Lewis claims he ‘never intended to retire, really’
We have so many other examples. Andrew Garfield went celibate over half a year for Silence. Leonardo DiCaprio slept in an animal carcass for 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. All of this, to some extent, is meant to invoke the seriousness with which Day-Lewis approaches his craft.
An Admirable But Uphill Battle
And, although his rebuttal to critics of the Method could be commendable, a brief promotional cycle may prove insufficient to alter perceptions, let alone their practices. Maybe if he wants to make audiences recall what method acting is, or to demonstrate what it can achieve, then Day-Lewis’s best bet is to simply begin producing more films. Surely we could all support that idea.
