It has been a long while since anyone saw or heard from Daniel Day-Lewis. Following his statement in 2017 declaring he would cease to pursue acting, just before the release of The Phantom Thread, the actor quietly faded from view. However, in his absence, his reputation has only grown.
The Mythos of His Acting Method
Largely, this reputation centers on his preferred approach to roles. Being an actor who famously disappears into the roles he plays – for instance, while filming Lincoln, he had Steven Spielberg call him “Mr. President” throughout the shoot – audiences has grown increasingly obsessed with his process. Is it true he really send messages to co-star Sally Field as Abraham Lincoln? Did 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 fallen out of love with over-the-top performances?
Now, Day-Lewis is back in the limelight, with some hesitation, promoting his latest movie Anemone. And he is using this to express his anger regarding how method acting is viewed. “I am somewhat annoyed nowadays to hear all kinds of people gobbling off and using phrases like ‘gone full method’, which I think is meant to imply that a person’s acting insane in a drastic way,” he told a major publication. “People often concentrate on superficial aspects of acting, and those details always seem to involve some form of self-punishment or a situation that imposes upon oneself a severe discomfort or mental instability. However, in the life for a performer, it has to principally be about the inner transformation.”
A World Full of Followers
To be honest, this sounds as if the actor has come out from seclusion and found himself shocked by the acting community that has developed mirroring his methods. If you’re widely considered among the best performers in history, and your process involves headbutting a dummy until you break your nose (in Gangs of New York) or enduring 48 hours in isolation deprived of sustenance (during In the Name of the Father), it’s natural that other actors will attempt to emulate that example by trying to mimic your hero.
In other words, we exist in a landscape populated by imperfect imitators of Day-Lewis who want nothing more than to demonstrate the extensive degree of dedication they invest in their roles. At the shallow end of this trend there are performers such as Lady Gaga, who was determined to win an Oscar with House of Gucci that she spent the whole campaign attempting to persuade people that she transformed into an Italian native for a year and a half in preparation.
Then we have Jared Leto, who decided to deeply embed himself in the character as the Joker (for Suicide Squad) by sending “disturbing” gifts to his castmates. These, according to various accounts, range from dead pigs and rats to anal beads and personal hygiene products, though the actor refuted the most extreme claims. Then, of course, there is Jim Carrey, who immersed himself so fully as Andy Kaufman for Man on the Moon that filmmakers succeeded in creating a feature-length documentary out of B-roll of him causing difficulties as impossible as he could for his colleagues.
The Modern Followers of the Method
The foremost practitioner of the Method at the moment seems to be Jeremy Strong (once Day-Lewis’s assistant), whose process while filming Succession was so laboriously intensive that it formed the subject of a derisive New Yorker profile, full of quotes from individuals who were worried about his conduct (“It’s the cost on himself that worries me,” said co-star Brian Cox) or extremely irritated by his actions (“I remember him causing others roll their eyes,” said an unnamed co-star).
Daniel Day-Lewis claims he ‘never intended to retire, truly’
We have numerous additional cases. Andrew Garfield went celibate over half a year for Silence. Leonardo DiCaprio slept in a dead animal for The Revenant. It’s quite possible that actor Austin Butler continues to talk like Elvis Presley, years following the movie’s release. All of this, in part, is meant to invoke the dedication in which Day-Lewis takes his craft.
A Noble Yet Challenging Fight
Moreover, while his fightback to critics of the Method might be noble, a short publicity tour may prove insufficient to alter perceptions, let alone their behaviour. Maybe if he wants to make audiences recall what method acting is, or to show them what it can achieve, then Day-Lewis’s best bet is to just start making more films. Surely we could all support that idea.
