It has been a long while since anyone saw or heard from the acclaimed actor Daniel Day-Lewis. Following his statement in 2017 declaring he would no longer pursue acting, prior to the release of Phantom Thread, the actor quietly faded from view. However, during his hiatus, his legend expanded further.
The Legend Surrounding His Method
Primarily, this legend revolves around his preferred approach to roles. As someone who famously disappears into his characters – for example, while filming Lincoln, he had the director address him as “Mr President” throughout the shoot – audiences has grown increasingly obsessed with his process. Is it true he actually sent texts to Sally Field in character as Lincoln? Did he only eat game he hunted for Last of the Mohicans? Did he demand receiving food via spoon for My Left Foot?
Madness in their method: has the public fallen out of love with over-the-top performances?
Currently, Day-Lewis is back to public attention, somewhat reluctantly, promoting his latest movie Anemone. He is using this to vocalise his anger regarding how the Method technique is perceived. “I am somewhat annoyed nowadays when I hear various individuals gobbling off and using phrases like ‘gone full method’, which I think suggests that a person’s acting insane in a drastic way,” he stated to a major publication. “Everyone often concentrate on superficial details of the work, and these elements always seem to involve some form of self-punishment or an experience that imposes upon oneself extreme unease or mental instability. But of course, in the career for a performer, it must mainly focus on the internal work.”
A World of Imitators
To be honest, this sounds as if the actor has emerged from seclusion only to discover aghast at the acting community that has been created mirroring his methods. When you are widely considered one of the greatest actors in history, and your process involves striking a prop to the point of injury (for Gangs of New York) or enduring two days in solitary confinement without food or water (for In the Name of the Father), then it stands to reason that fellow performers will want to emulate that example by imitating their idol.
Essentially, we now live in a landscape full of half-cocked Day-Lewis impersonators who want nothing more than to show the world the sheer amount of effort they put into a character. On the milder side of the pool there are performers such as Lady Gaga, who was determined to win an Oscar for House of Gucci that she spent the whole campaign attempting to persuade people that she became functionally Italian for a year and a half in preparation.
Additionally, there is Jared Leto, who decided to immerse himself into the role as the Joker (for Suicide Squad) by sending “disturbing” presents to fellow cast members. These, according to various accounts, included dead pigs and rats to anal beads and used condoms, though the actor refuted those worst excesses. Then, naturally, we have Jim Carrey, who went so deep as Andy Kaufman for Man on the Moon that filmmakers literally managed in creating a feature-length documentary out of B-roll of him making life as impossible as he could for his colleagues.
Contemporary Followers of the Method
The foremost Method Guy at the moment would appear to be Jeremy Strong (formerly Day-Lewis’s assistant), whose process while filming Succession was so rigorously detailed that it became the subject of a derisive magazine feature, full of quotes from people who were worried for his behaviour (“The toll on himself that worries me,” remarked Brian Cox) or annoyed beyond all measure by it (“I remember [him] making everyone else roll their eyes,” said an anonymous cast member).
The actor claims he ‘never intended to stop acting, truly’
We have numerous additional cases. Andrew Garfield abstained from sex for six months while preparing for Silence. Leonardo DiCaprio slept in a dead animal for The Revenant. There’s a fighting chance that actor Austin Butler continues to talk like Elvis Presley, three years after that film came out. All of this, to some extent, is meant to invoke the seriousness with which Day-Lewis takes his work.
A Noble Yet Challenging Battle
And, although his rebuttal against method detractors might be noble, a brief promotional cycle may prove insufficient to change anyone’s mind, let alone their practices. Perhaps if he wants to make audiences recall what method acting is, or to demonstrate what it can achieve, then the optimal strategy for Day-Lewis is to simply start making additional movies. Surely we could all get behind that.
