It’s been a long while since the public saw or heard from Daniel Day-Lewis. Following his announcement in 2017 declaring he would cease to pursue acting, just before the debut of Phantom Thread, Day-Lewis quietly faded from view. However, in his absence, his reputation expanded further.
The Legend of His Method
Largely, this legend centers on his favored style of working. Being an actor who famously immerses himself in the roles he plays – for example, during Lincoln, he had Steven Spielberg address him as “Mr. President” throughout the shoot – audiences has grown increasingly obsessed with how he works. Did he actually sent messages to co-star Sally Field as Abraham Lincoln? Was it accurate that he only eat game he hunted during The Last of the Mohicans? And did he insist on receiving food via spoon while filming My Left Foot?
Extreme acting methods: has the public fallen out of love with over-the-top performances?
Currently, Daniel Day-Lewis is back in the limelight, somewhat reluctantly, for his new film Anemone. He is using this to express his anger at how method acting is perceived. “I am somewhat annoyed nowadays when I hear all kinds of people talking carelessly and saying things like ‘fully embraced the Method’, which seems is meant to imply that a person’s behaving like a lunatic in a drastic way,” he told a major publication. “People tends to focus on superficial details of the work, and these elements typically include some sort of self-flagellation or an experience that causes extreme unease or mental instability. However, in the life of an actor, it must principally be about the internal work.”
An Industry of Imitators
To be honest, it appears as if Day-Lewis has come out from his retreat only to discover shocked by the world that has been created in his image. If you’re widely considered among the best performers in history, and your approach involves striking a prop until you break your nose (for Gangs of New York) or spending two days in isolation without food or water (during In the Name of the Father), then it stands to reason that fellow performers will attempt to fill that vacuum by imitating their idol.
In other words, we exist in a landscape full of imperfect imitators of Day-Lewis who strive only to show the world the sheer amount of effort they put into a character. At the shallow end of this trend there are performers such as Lady Gaga, who was so desperate to win an Oscar for House of Gucci that she dedicated the entire promotion trying to convince everyone that she became functionally Italian for a year and a half in preparation.
Additionally, there is Jared Leto, who chose to immerse himself into the role as the Joker (for Suicide Squad) by sending “disturbing” gifts to fellow cast members. These, according to various accounts, included deceased animals to intimate objects and personal hygiene products, although the actor refuted the most extreme claims. Then, naturally, we have Jim Carrey, who went so deep as Andy Kaufman during Man on the Moon that they succeeded 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 foremost practitioner of the Method currently seems to be Jeremy Strong (formerly an assistant to Day-Lewis), whose process while filming Succession was so rigorously detailed that it became the basis of a critical magazine feature, including statements from individuals who were worried about his conduct (“The toll on himself concerns me,” remarked co-star Brian Cox) or extremely irritated by his actions (“I remember [him] making everyone else to react with exasperation,” said an anonymous cast member).
The actor claims he ‘did not plan to stop acting, really’
We have so many other examples. Andrew Garfield went celibate for six months while preparing for Silence. Leonardo DiCaprio rested inside a dead animal for The Revenant. It’s quite possible that actor Austin Butler continues to talk in the style of Elvis, three years after the movie’s release. Each of these instances, to some extent, is meant to invoke the dedication in which Day-Lewis takes his craft.
An Admirable Yet Challenging Battle
And, although his rebuttal 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. Maybe if he wants to remind people the true essence of the Method, or to demonstrate what it can achieve, then Day-Lewis’s best bet is to simply start making additional movies. Certainly we could all support that idea.
