It has been a long while since the public saw or heard from Daniel Day-Lewis. After he announcement in 2017 that he would cease to pursue acting, just before the debut of The Phantom Thread, the actor withdrew from the spotlight. However, in his absence, his legend expanded further.
The Mythos of His Method
Primarily, this reputation centers on his favored style of working. Being an actor who famously disappears into the roles he plays – for instance, during the Lincoln biopic, he had the director address him as “Mr. President” throughout the shoot – audiences has grown more fascinated with how he works. Did he really send messages to co-star Sally Field as Abraham Lincoln? Was it accurate that he only eat game he hunted during Last of the Mohicans? And did he demand being spoon-fed for My Left Foot?
Madness in their method: has the public fallen out of love with actorly excess?
Currently, Day-Lewis has returned in the limelight, somewhat reluctantly, promoting his latest movie Anemone. He is taking this chance to express his frustration 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 I think is meant to imply that a person’s behaving like a lunatic in a drastic way,” he stated to a major publication. “Everyone often concentrate on the less important details of the work, and those details typically include some form of self-punishment or an experience that imposes upon oneself a severe discomfort or mental instability. However, in the life for a performer, it has to mainly focus on the internal work.”
A World of Imitators
To be honest, it appears like the actor has come out from his retreat and found himself aghast at the world that has developed mirroring his methods. If you’re regarded as one of the greatest performers to ever work, and your approach includes headbutting a dummy until you break your nose (for Gangs of New York) or enduring two days in isolation without food or water (during In the Name of the Father), it’s natural that other actors will attempt to fill that vacuum by trying to mimic their idol.
In other words, we exist in a landscape populated by imperfect Day-Lewis impersonators who strive only to demonstrate the sheer amount of effort they invest in a character. At the shallow end of the pool there are performers such as Lady Gaga, who was so desperate to win an Oscar for House of Gucci that she spent the entire promotion attempting to persuade people that she transformed into an Italian native for a year and a half as preparation.
Then we have Jared Leto, who decided to immerse himself into the role as the Joker (for Suicide Squad) by sending “disturbing” presents to fellow cast members. These, depending on who you ask, included dead pigs and rats to intimate objects and used condoms, though the actor refuted the most extreme claims. And then, of course, we have Jim Carrey, who went so deep as Andy Kaufman during Man on the Moon that filmmakers literally managed in creating a full-length documentary from behind-the-scenes footage of him making life to the utmost for his colleagues.
Contemporary Method Practitioners
The foremost practitioner of the Method at the moment would appear to be Jeremy Strong (once an assistant to Day-Lewis), whose approach while filming Succession was so laboriously intensive that it formed the basis of a derisive New Yorker profile, full of quotes from individuals who were either concerned for his behaviour (“It’s the cost to himself concerns me,” said co-star Brian Cox) or annoyed beyond all measure by it (“I recall [him] making others to react with exasperation,” said an unnamed co-star).
Daniel Day-Lewis says he ‘never intended to stop acting, really’
We have numerous additional cases. Andrew Garfield went celibate over half a year while preparing for Silence. Leonardo DiCaprio slept in a dead animal during The Revenant. It’s quite possible that Austin Butler continues to talk in the style of Elvis, three years after that film came out. All of this, to some extent, aims to evoke the dedication in which Day-Lewis approaches his craft.
An Admirable But Uphill Battle
And, 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 practices. Perhaps if he wishes to make audiences recall what method acting is, or to demonstrate its potential results, then Day-Lewis’s best bet is to just begin producing more films. Surely we could all get behind that.
