It’s been a long while since anyone saw or heard from Daniel Day-Lewis. Following his announcement in 2017 that he would no longer work as an actor, prior to the debut of Phantom Thread, Day-Lewis withdrew from the spotlight. However, in his absence, his legend expanded further.
The Legend Surrounding His Method
Largely, this legend centers on his preferred approach to roles. Being an actor who famously immerses himself in his characters – for example, while filming the Lincoln biopic, he had the director address him as “Mr. President” for the entire production – audiences has become increasingly obsessed with how he works. Is it true he really send messages to co-star Sally Field as Abraham Lincoln? Was it accurate that he consumed solely animals he’d killed during The Last of the Mohicans? Did he insist on receiving food via spoon for My Left Foot?
Madness in their method: have we lost interest with actorly excess?
Currently, Daniel Day-Lewis has returned in the limelight, somewhat reluctantly, promoting his latest movie Anemone. He is using this to vocalise his frustration at how method acting is perceived. “I’m a little cross nowadays when I hear all kinds of people talking carelessly and saying things like ‘fully embraced the Method’, which I think suggests that a person’s acting insane in a drastic way,” he told the New York Times. “People tends to focus on superficial details of the work, and those details typically include some form of self-punishment or an experience that imposes upon oneself extreme unease or psychological strain. But of course, in the career for a performer, it has to mainly focus on the internal work.”
An Industry of Imitators
To be honest, it appears as if Day-Lewis has come out from his retreat and found himself aghast at the acting community that has developed in his image. When you are widely considered one of the greatest performers to ever work, and your process includes headbutting a dummy until you break your nose (for Gangs of New York) or spending two days in solitary confinement deprived of sustenance (for In the Name of the Father), it’s natural that other actors will want to emulate that example by imitating their idol.
In other words, we exist in a landscape populated by imperfect imitators of Day-Lewis who want nothing more than to demonstrate the sheer amount of effort they put into a character. On the milder side 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 transformed into functionally Italian for a year and a half as preparation.
Then we have Jared Leto, who chose to immerse himself in the character as the Joker (for Suicide Squad) through sending “disturbing” gifts to fellow cast members. These, according to various accounts, range from deceased animals to intimate objects and used condoms, although the actor refuted those worst excesses. And then, of course, there is Jim Carrey, who immersed himself so fully as Andy Kaufman during Man on the Moon that filmmakers literally managed in creating a feature-length documentary out of B-roll of him causing difficulties as impossible as he could for his colleagues.
Contemporary Method Practitioners
The foremost Method Guy at the moment seems to be Jeremy Strong (formerly an assistant to Day-Lewis), whose approach while filming Succession was so rigorously detailed that it became the subject of a derisive New Yorker profile, full of quotes from people who were either concerned for his behaviour (“It’s the cost to himself concerns me,” said co-star Brian Cox) or annoyed beyond all measure by his actions (“I recall him causing others to react with exasperation,” stated an unnamed co-star).
Daniel Day-Lewis says he ‘did not plan to retire, truly’
There are so many other examples. Andrew Garfield went celibate over half a year for Silence. Leonardo DiCaprio rested inside an animal carcass for The Revenant. There’s a fighting chance that Austin Butler still speaks in the style of Elvis, years following that film came out. All of this, to some extent, aims to evoke the seriousness in which Day-Lewis approaches his work.
An Admirable Yet Challenging Fight
Moreover, although his rebuttal to critics of the Method could be commendable, a short publicity tour might not be enough to alter perceptions, let alone their practices. Maybe if he wants to make audiences recall what method acting is, or to show them its potential results, then Day-Lewis’s best bet is to simply start making additional movies. Certainly we could all support that idea.
