It’s been a long while since the public saw or heard from the acclaimed actor Daniel Day-Lewis. After he announcement in 2017 declaring he would cease to work as an actor, just before the debut of The Phantom Thread, Day-Lewis withdrew from the spotlight. However, during his hiatus, his legend has only grown.
The Mythos Surrounding His Acting Method
Primarily, this reputation centers on his favored approach to roles. Being an actor who famously immerses himself in the roles he plays – for instance, while filming Lincoln, he had the director address him as “Mr. President” for the entire production – audiences has become increasingly obsessed with his process. Did he really send messages to co-star Sally Field in character as Lincoln? Was it accurate that he only eat game he hunted for 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?
Currently, Day-Lewis has returned to public attention, with some hesitation, promoting his latest movie Anemone. He is using this to vocalise his frustration regarding how the Method technique is perceived. “I’m a little cross nowadays when I hear various individuals 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 the New York Times. “Everyone often concentrate on the less important details of the work, and those details typically include some sort of self-punishment or a situation that causes a severe discomfort or mental instability. But of course, in the career for a performer, it has to principally be about the internal work.”
An Industry Full of Followers
Frankly, this sounds as if Day-Lewis has emerged from seclusion and found himself aghast at the world that has been created mirroring his methods. If you’re widely considered among the best performers to ever work, and your process includes striking a prop until you break your nose (for Gangs of New York) or spending two days in isolation deprived of sustenance (for In the Name of the Father), then it stands to reason that other actors will attempt to fill that vacuum by imitating your hero.
In other words, we now live in an environment full of half-cocked Day-Lewis impersonators who want nothing more than to demonstrate the sheer amount of dedication they put into a character. On the milder side of this trend we have people like Lady Gaga, who was so desperate to earn an Academy Award for House of Gucci that she spent the entire promotion attempting to persuade people that she transformed into an Italian native over 18 months as preparation.
Then we have Jared Leto, who decided to immerse himself in the character of the Joker (for Suicide Squad) through sending “disturbing” presents to fellow cast members. These items, depending on who you ask, included dead pigs and rats to intimate objects and used condoms, though Leto denied those worst excesses. Then, naturally, there is Jim Carrey, who went so deep into Andy Kaufman for Man on the Moon that they succeeded to get a feature-length documentary from behind-the-scenes footage of him making life as impossible as he could for his colleagues.
The Modern Method Practitioners
The main practitioner of the Method at the moment would appear to be Jeremy Strong (formerly Day-Lewis’s assistant), whose approach during Succession was so rigorously detailed that it became the subject of a derisive New Yorker profile, including statements from individuals who were either concerned for his behaviour (“It’s the cost to himself concerns me,” said Brian Cox) or annoyed beyond all measure by it (“I recall [him] making others to react with exasperation,” stated an unnamed co-star).
Daniel Day-Lewis says he ‘never intended to stop acting, truly’
There are so many other examples. Andrew Garfield abstained from sex for six months for Silence. Leonardo DiCaprio rested inside an animal carcass during The Revenant. There’s a fighting chance that Austin Butler still speaks like Elvis Presley, years following the movie’s release. All of this, in part, aims to evoke the seriousness with which Day-Lewis approaches his craft.
A Noble Yet Challenging Battle
Moreover, although his rebuttal to critics of the Method might be noble, a brief promotional cycle may prove insufficient to change anyone’s mind, let alone their behaviour. Perhaps if he wants to remind people what method acting is, or to show them its potential results, then the optimal strategy for Day-Lewis is to simply begin producing more films. Surely we could all get behind that.
