It has been a long while since anyone saw or heard from the acclaimed actor Daniel Day-Lewis. Following his announcement in 2017 declaring he would no longer pursue acting, prior to the release of Phantom Thread, Day-Lewis quietly faded from view. Yet, during his hiatus, his legend expanded further.
The Legend Surrounding His Method
Primarily, this reputation centers on his preferred style of working. As someone known for disappears into the roles he plays – for instance, during the Lincoln biopic, reportedly asked the director address him as “Mr. President” for the entire production – the world has become increasingly obsessed with how he works. Did he actually sent texts to Sally Field as Abraham Lincoln? Did he only eat animals he’d killed for The Last of the Mohicans? And did he demand receiving food via spoon while filming My Left Foot?
Extreme acting methods: have we lost interest with over-the-top performances?
Currently, Day-Lewis is back to public attention, somewhat reluctantly, for his new film Anemone. And he is taking this chance to express his frustration at how method acting is viewed. “I’m a little cross these days to hear various individuals gobbling off and saying things like ‘fully embraced the Method’, which seems is meant to imply that a person’s acting insane in a drastic way,” he told the New York Times. “Everyone tends to focus on superficial details of the work, and these elements always seem to involve some sort of self-punishment or an experience that causes extreme unease or psychological strain. However, in the career of an actor, it has to mainly focus on the inner transformation.”
A World of Imitators
Frankly, this sounds as if the actor has emerged from his retreat and found himself aghast at the world that has developed mirroring his methods. When you are regarded as one of the greatest performers to ever work, and your process involves headbutting a dummy to the point of injury (for Gangs of New York) or spending 48 hours in isolation deprived of sustenance (for In the Name of the Father), then it stands to reason that fellow performers will want to emulate that example by trying to mimic your hero.
In other words, we exist in a landscape full of half-cocked imitators of Day-Lewis who want nothing more than to demonstrate the sheer amount of dedication they put into their roles. 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 spent the whole campaign trying to convince everyone that she transformed into functionally Italian for a year and a half as preparation.
Then we have Jared Leto, who chose to immerse himself in the character as the Joker (for Suicide Squad) through sending “disturbing” gifts to his castmates. These, according to various accounts, included dead pigs and rats to intimate objects and used condoms, although the actor refuted the most extreme claims. Then, of course, there is Jim Carrey, who immersed himself so fully into Andy Kaufman for Man on the Moon that they literally managed in creating a feature-length documentary out of B-roll of him making life to the utmost 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 approach while filming Succession was so rigorously detailed that it formed the subject of a critical magazine feature, full of quotes from individuals who were either concerned for his behaviour (“The toll to himself concerns me,” remarked Brian Cox) or extremely irritated by it (“I remember [him] making everyone else roll their eyes,” stated an anonymous cast member).
Daniel Day-Lewis says he ‘never intended to retire, really’
There are so many other examples. Andrew Garfield went celibate over half a year for Silence. Leonardo DiCaprio slept in a dead animal during The Revenant. There’s a fighting chance that Austin Butler continues to talk like Elvis Presley, three years after that film came out. All of this, in part, aims to evoke the dedication in which Day-Lewis takes his work.
A Noble Yet Challenging Battle
Moreover, while his fightback to critics of the Method might be noble, a brief promotional cycle 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 show them what it can achieve, then Day-Lewis’s best bet is to just begin producing more films. Surely we could all get behind that.
