It’s been quite some time since the public caught a glimpse of Daniel Day-Lewis. Following his statement in 2017 declaring he would no longer pursue acting, prior to the release of The Phantom Thread, the actor quietly faded from view. However, during his hiatus, his legend has only grown.
The Mythos of His Method
Primarily, this legend revolves around his preferred style of working. As someone who famously immerses himself in the roles he plays – for example, during the Lincoln biopic, reportedly asked the director call him “Mr. President” throughout the shoot – audiences has grown more fascinated with his process. Did he actually sent messages to co-star Sally Field in character as Lincoln? Did he only eat game he hunted for The Last of the Mohicans? Did he demand receiving food via spoon for My Left Foot?
Extreme acting methods: have we fallen out of love with actorly excess?
Now, Daniel Day-Lewis has returned in the limelight, somewhat reluctantly, for his new film Anemone. He is using this to express his frustration at how method acting is viewed. “I am somewhat annoyed 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 behaving like a lunatic in a drastic way,” he told a major publication. “People often concentrate on superficial aspects of acting, and those details always seem to involve some form of self-flagellation or an experience that imposes upon oneself extreme unease or psychological strain. However, in the career for a performer, it must principally be about the internal work.”
An Industry of Imitators
Frankly, this sounds like Day-Lewis has emerged from his retreat only to discover shocked by the world that has developed mirroring his methods. When you are widely considered one of the greatest actors to ever work, and your approach includes striking a prop to the point of injury (for Gangs of New York) or spending 48 hours in isolation without food or water (for In the Name of the Father), it’s natural that fellow performers will attempt to emulate that example by imitating their idol.
Essentially, we now live in a landscape full of imperfect Day-Lewis impersonators who want nothing more than to demonstrate the sheer amount of dedication they put into their roles. At the shallow end of this trend there are performers such as Lady Gaga, who was so desperate to earn an Academy Award for House of Gucci that she dedicated the entire promotion attempting to persuade people that she became functionally Italian over 18 months in preparation.
Then we have Jared Leto, who chose to deeply embed himself into the role of the Joker (in Suicide Squad) through sending “horrifying” gifts to his castmates. These, according to various accounts, included dead pigs and rats to anal beads and personal hygiene products, although the actor refuted the most extreme claims. And then, of course, we have Jim Carrey, who went so deep as Andy Kaufman during Man on the Moon that filmmakers literally managed to get a feature-length documentary out of B-roll of him making life to the utmost for everyone around him.
The Modern Method Practitioners
The foremost Method Guy currently would appear to be Jeremy Strong (formerly an assistant to Day-Lewis), whose process while filming Succession was so laboriously intensive that it formed the subject of a critical New Yorker profile, full of quotes from individuals who were worried for his behaviour (“The toll on himself concerns me,” said co-star Brian Cox) or annoyed beyond all measure by his actions (“I remember [him] making everyone else to react with exasperation,” said an anonymous cast member).
The actor says he ‘did not plan to retire, truly’
There are so many other examples. Andrew Garfield abstained from sex over half a year while preparing for Silence. Leonardo DiCaprio rested inside a dead animal during The Revenant. There’s a fighting chance that Austin Butler continues to talk in the style of Elvis, 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 Yet Challenging Fight
And, although his rebuttal to critics of the Method might be noble, a short publicity tour may prove insufficient to alter perceptions, let alone their behaviour. Maybe if he wishes to make audiences recall what method acting is, or to show them its potential results, then Day-Lewis’s best bet is to simply begin producing more films. Certainly everyone would support that idea.
