It has been quite some time since the public caught a glimpse of Daniel Day-Lewis. Following his statement in 2017 that he would cease to pursue acting, prior to the release of Phantom Thread, Day-Lewis quietly faded from view. Yet, in his absence, his legend has only grown.
The Legend of His Acting Method
Primarily, this legend centers on his preferred approach to roles. Being an actor who famously disappears into the roles he plays – for instance, while filming Lincoln, he had the director address him as “Mr. President” throughout the shoot – the world has grown more fascinated with his process. Is it true he really send texts to Sally Field as Abraham Lincoln? Was it accurate that he consumed solely animals he’d killed during Last of the Mohicans? And did he demand receiving food via spoon while filming My Left Foot?
Extreme acting methods: has the public lost interest with actorly excess?
Currently, Day-Lewis is back to public attention, with some hesitation, for his new film Anemone. He is using this to vocalise his frustration at how method acting is viewed. “I am somewhat annoyed these days when I hear various individuals gobbling off and saying things like ‘gone full method’, which seems suggests 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 mainly focus on the internal work.”
A World Full of Followers
To be honest, this sounds as if the actor has come out from his retreat and found himself aghast at the acting community that has been created mirroring his methods. When you are regarded as among the best performers to ever work, and your approach includes headbutting a dummy until you break your nose (in Gangs of New York) or spending two days in solitary confinement deprived of sustenance (during In the Name of the Father), it’s natural that fellow performers will attempt to fill that vacuum by imitating their idol.
Essentially, we now live in a landscape full of half-cocked Day-Lewis impersonators who strive only to show the world the extensive degree of dedication they put into a character. On the milder side of the pool we have people like Lady Gaga, who was so desperate to win an Oscar with House of Gucci that she spent the entire promotion trying to convince everyone that she became functionally Italian over 18 months as preparation.
Then we have Jared Leto, who chose to deeply embed himself in the character of the Joker (in Suicide Squad) through sending “disturbing” gifts to his castmates. These, depending on who you ask, included deceased animals to intimate objects and used condoms, though Leto denied those worst excesses. And then, naturally, there is Jim Carrey, who immersed himself so fully as Andy Kaufman during Man on the Moon that filmmakers literally managed in creating a full-length documentary out of B-roll of him causing difficulties as impossible as he could for everyone around him.
Contemporary Method Practitioners
The main Method Guy currently seems to be Jeremy Strong (formerly Day-Lewis’s assistant), 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 (“It’s the cost on himself concerns me,” remarked Brian Cox) or annoyed beyond all measure by his actions (“I recall [him] making others to react with exasperation,” stated an unnamed co-star).
Daniel Day-Lewis claims he ‘did not plan to stop acting, truly’
We have so many other examples. Andrew Garfield abstained from sex over half a year while preparing for Silence. Leonardo DiCaprio slept in a dead animal for The Revenant. There’s a fighting chance that Austin Butler continues to talk in the style of Elvis, years following the movie’s release. Each of these instances, in part, is meant to invoke the dedication in which Day-Lewis approaches his craft.
A Noble But Uphill Battle
Moreover, although his rebuttal to critics of the Method could be commendable, a short publicity tour may prove insufficient to change anyone’s mind, let alone their behaviour. Perhaps if he wishes 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 begin producing more films. Certainly we could all get behind that.
