It’s been quite some time since the public caught a glimpse of the acclaimed actor Daniel Day-Lewis. Following his announcement in 2017 that he would cease to pursue acting, just before the release of The Phantom Thread, the actor withdrew from the spotlight. However, during his hiatus, his reputation has only grown.
The Mythos Surrounding His Acting Method
Largely, this legend revolves around his favored style of working. As someone who famously disappears into his characters – for example, during the Lincoln biopic, he had the director call him “Mr President” for the entire production – the world has become more fascinated with how he works. Is it true he actually sent messages to co-star Sally Field in character as Lincoln? Was it accurate that he consumed solely game he hunted for Last of the Mohicans? Did he insist on being spoon-fed for My Left Foot?
Madness in their method: has the public fallen out of love with actorly excess?
Now, Daniel Day-Lewis is back to public attention, with some hesitation, promoting his latest movie Anemone. And he is taking this chance to vocalise his frustration at how method acting is perceived. “I am somewhat annoyed these days to 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 an extreme fashion,” he told the New York Times. “People often concentrate on the less important details of the work, and those details typically include some sort of self-flagellation or an experience that imposes upon oneself extreme unease or mental instability. But of course, in the life of an actor, it has to principally be about the internal work.”
A World of Imitators
To be honest, this sounds like Day-Lewis has come out from his retreat only to discover shocked by the acting community that has been created in his image. When you are regarded as one of the greatest actors in history, and your process involves headbutting a dummy to the point of injury (for Gangs of New York) or spending 48 hours in solitary confinement without food or water (for In the Name of the Father), then it stands to reason that other actors will attempt to fill that vacuum by trying to mimic their idol.
In other words, we now live in a landscape full of half-cocked imitators of Day-Lewis who want nothing more than to demonstrate the sheer amount of dedication they put into their roles. At the shallow end of this trend we have people like Lady Gaga, who was determined to earn an Academy Award with House of Gucci that she dedicated the whole campaign trying to convince everyone that she became functionally Italian for a year and a half in preparation.
Then we have Jared Leto, who decided to immerse himself into the role of the Joker (for Suicide Squad) through sending “horrifying” presents to fellow cast members. These, depending on who you ask, included dead pigs and rats to intimate objects and used condoms, though Leto denied the most extreme claims. Then, of course, we have Jim Carrey, who went so deep as Andy Kaufman during Man on the Moon that they succeeded to get a feature-length documentary out of B-roll of him causing difficulties as impossible as he could for his colleagues.
The Modern Method Practitioners
The foremost practitioner of the Method at the moment would appear to be Jeremy Strong (formerly an assistant to Day-Lewis), whose process while filming Succession was so rigorously detailed that it formed the subject of a derisive magazine feature, full of quotes from people who were either concerned for his behaviour (“It’s the cost on himself that worries me,” remarked Brian Cox) or annoyed beyond all measure by it (“I remember [him] making everyone else to react with exasperation,” said an anonymous cast member).
The actor says he ‘did not plan to retire, really’
There are so many other examples. Andrew Garfield went celibate for six months for Silence. Leonardo DiCaprio slept in an animal carcass during The Revenant. There’s a fighting chance that Austin Butler continues to talk like Elvis Presley, three years after that film came out. Each of these instances, in part, aims to evoke the seriousness in which Day-Lewis approaches his craft.
An Admirable Yet Challenging Battle
And, while his fightback to critics of the Method could be commendable, a brief promotional cycle may prove insufficient to change anyone’s mind, let alone their practices. Perhaps if he wants to remind people what method acting is, or to show them what it can achieve, then Day-Lewis’s best bet is to simply begin producing additional movies. Certainly we could all support that idea.
