It’s been quite some time since anyone saw or heard from the acclaimed actor Daniel Day-Lewis. After he announcement in 2017 that he would no longer pursue acting, just before the debut of The Phantom Thread, the actor quietly faded from view. However, during his hiatus, his legend has only grown.
The Legend Surrounding His Method
Largely, this reputation centers on his preferred style of working. As someone known for immerses himself in his characters – for instance, while filming the Lincoln biopic, reportedly asked the director address him as “Mr President” for the entire production – the world has grown increasingly obsessed with his process. Is it true he actually sent messages to co-star Sally Field as Abraham Lincoln? Was it accurate that he consumed solely game he hunted during The Last of the Mohicans? Did he insist on receiving food via spoon for My Left Foot?
Extreme acting methods: has the public fallen out of love with over-the-top performances?
Currently, Day-Lewis is back to public attention, somewhat reluctantly, for his new film Anemone. And he is using this to express his frustration at how the Method technique is viewed. “I am somewhat annoyed nowadays to hear various individuals gobbling off and saying things like ‘fully embraced the Method’, which I think suggests that a person’s behaving like a lunatic in an extreme fashion,” he told a major publication. “People tends to focus on the less important details of the work, and those details always seem to involve some sort of self-flagellation or an experience that imposes upon oneself extreme unease or psychological strain. However, in the career of an actor, it must principally be about the inner transformation.”
An Industry Full of Followers
Frankly, this sounds like Day-Lewis has come out from his retreat only to discover aghast at the acting community that has developed in his image. When you are widely considered among the best performers in history, and your process involves headbutting a dummy to the point of injury (for Gangs of New York) or spending 48 hours in isolation without food or water (during In the Name of the Father), then it stands to reason that fellow performers will want to fill that vacuum by trying to mimic your hero.
Essentially, we now live in a landscape populated by imperfect Day-Lewis impersonators who want nothing more than to show the world the sheer amount of dedication 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 with House of Gucci that she dedicated the entire promotion trying to convince everyone that she became an Italian native over 18 months as preparation.
Additionally, there is Jared Leto, who decided to immerse himself in the character as the Joker (for Suicide Squad) through sending “horrifying” presents to his castmates. These items, depending on who you ask, included dead pigs and rats to intimate objects and used condoms, although Leto denied those worst excesses. And then, naturally, we have Jim Carrey, who went so deep as Andy Kaufman for Man on the Moon that they succeeded to get a full-length documentary out of B-roll of him causing difficulties as impossible as he could for everyone around him.
The Modern Followers of the Method
The foremost Method Guy at the moment would appear to be Jeremy Strong (once Day-Lewis’s assistant), whose process during Succession was so laboriously intensive that it became the subject of a derisive magazine feature, including statements from people who were either concerned for his behaviour (“The toll on himself concerns me,” said co-star Brian Cox) or extremely irritated by his actions (“I remember [him] making everyone else roll their eyes,” said an anonymous cast member).
Daniel Day-Lewis says he ‘never intended to retire, really’
There are so many other examples. Andrew Garfield went celibate for six months for Silence. Leonardo DiCaprio rested inside a dead animal during The Revenant. It’s quite possible that Austin Butler continues to talk like Elvis Presley, three years after that film came out. All of this, in part, is meant to invoke the seriousness in which Day-Lewis approaches his craft.
An Admirable But Uphill Battle
Moreover, although his rebuttal to critics of the Method could be commendable, a brief promotional cycle may prove insufficient to alter perceptions, let alone their behaviour. Perhaps if he wants to remind people what method acting is, or to demonstrate its potential results, then Day-Lewis’s best bet is to simply begin producing more films. Surely everyone would support that idea.
