It’s been quite some time since anyone caught a glimpse of Daniel Day-Lewis. After he announcement in 2017 declaring he would cease to work as an actor, just before the debut of Phantom Thread, Day-Lewis withdrew from the spotlight. However, in his absence, his legend has only grown.
The Legend Surrounding His Method
Primarily, this reputation revolves around his favored approach to roles. Being an actor known for disappears into his characters – for instance, while filming Lincoln, reportedly asked Steven Spielberg address him as “Mr. President” for the entire production – audiences has grown increasingly obsessed with his process. Did he really send texts to Sally Field as Abraham 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 actorly excess?
Currently, Day-Lewis has returned to public attention, somewhat reluctantly, promoting his latest movie Anemone. And he is using this to vocalise his anger at how method acting is perceived. “I’m a little cross nowadays when I hear various individuals talking carelessly and saying things like ‘fully embraced the Method’, which I think suggests that someone is acting insane in a drastic way,” he stated to a major publication. “People often concentrate on superficial details of the work, and those details typically include some sort of self-flagellation or an experience that causes a severe discomfort or psychological strain. However, in the life of an actor, it must principally be about the inner transformation.”
A World of Imitators
Frankly, this sounds as if the actor has come out from seclusion only to discover aghast at the acting community that has developed in his image. When you are regarded as among the best actors to ever work, and your process includes headbutting a dummy until you break your nose (in Gangs of New York) or enduring 48 hours in isolation deprived of sustenance (for In the Name of the Father), it’s natural that fellow performers will want to fill that vacuum by imitating their idol.
In other words, we exist in an environment populated by half-cocked Day-Lewis impersonators who strive only to demonstrate 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 win an Oscar for House of Gucci that she dedicated the whole campaign attempting to persuade people that she became functionally Italian for a year and a half as preparation.
Then we have Jared Leto, who decided to deeply embed himself into the role as the Joker (in Suicide Squad) through sending “disturbing” gifts to fellow cast members. These, depending on who you ask, included deceased animals to intimate objects and used condoms, though the actor refuted the most extreme claims. And then, naturally, we have Jim Carrey, who went so deep as Andy Kaufman during Man on the Moon that they literally managed in creating 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 main practitioner of the Method at the moment seems to be Jeremy Strong (once an assistant to Day-Lewis), whose process during Succession was so laboriously intensive that it became the subject of a critical magazine feature, full of quotes from people who were either concerned for his behaviour (“It’s the cost to himself that worries me,” said co-star Brian Cox) or annoyed beyond all measure by it (“I recall [him] making others to react with exasperation,” stated an unnamed co-star).
The actor claims he ‘did not plan to stop acting, really’
We have so many other examples. Andrew Garfield went celibate for six months for Silence. Leonardo DiCaprio slept in a dead animal during The Revenant. It’s quite possible that actor Austin Butler still speaks in the style of Elvis, years following the movie’s release. All of this, in part, aims to evoke the seriousness in which Day-Lewis approaches his craft.
An Admirable Yet Challenging Fight
Moreover, while his fightback against method detractors might be noble, a short publicity tour may prove insufficient to alter perceptions, not to mention their behaviour. Maybe if he wants to remind people the true essence of the Method, or to show them what it can achieve, then Day-Lewis’s best bet is to just begin producing additional movies. Surely we could all get behind that.
