It’s been a long while since the public saw or heard from Daniel Day-Lewis. After he statement in 2017 that he would cease to pursue acting, prior to the release of The Phantom Thread, the actor quietly faded from view. Yet, in his absence, his legend has only grown.
The Mythos Surrounding His Method
Largely, this reputation centers on his preferred style of working. Being an actor who famously disappears into his characters – for example, during the Lincoln biopic, reportedly asked the director call him “Mr President” throughout the shoot – the world has become increasingly obsessed with his process. Is it true he actually sent messages to co-star Sally Field in character as Lincoln? Did he only eat animals he’d killed during Last of the Mohicans? Did he demand being spoon-fed for My Left Foot?
Madness in their method: have we fallen out of love with over-the-top performances?
Now, Daniel Day-Lewis is back in the limelight, with some hesitation, promoting his latest movie Anemone. He is taking this chance to express his anger at how method acting is perceived. “I am somewhat annoyed these days when I hear all kinds of people gobbling off and using phrases like ‘fully embraced the Method’, which seems is meant to imply that a person’s behaving like a lunatic in an extreme fashion,” he told the New York Times. “Everyone tends to focus on the less important aspects of acting, and those details 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 life for a performer, it has to principally be about the inner transformation.”
An Industry of Imitators
To be honest, this sounds like Day-Lewis has come out from his retreat only to discover aghast at the acting community that has been created in his image. If you’re widely considered among the best performers to ever work, and your process includes striking a prop until you break your nose (in Gangs of New York) or enduring two days in isolation without food or water (for In the Name of the Father), then it stands to reason that other actors will want to fill that vacuum by trying to mimic their idol.
In other words, we now live in an environment full of half-cocked imitators of Day-Lewis who strive only to show the world the sheer amount of effort they put into their roles. On the milder side of the pool we have people like Lady Gaga, who was determined to earn an Academy Award with House of Gucci that she spent the entire promotion trying to convince everyone that she transformed into an Italian native over 18 months as preparation.
Then we have Jared Leto, who chose to deeply embed himself in the character as the Joker (for Suicide Squad) by sending “horrifying” gifts to fellow cast members. These items, according to various accounts, included deceased animals to intimate objects and personal hygiene products, although Leto denied the most extreme claims. And then, of course, there is Jim Carrey, who went so deep as Andy Kaufman during Man on the Moon that filmmakers literally managed to get a feature-length documentary from behind-the-scenes footage of him causing difficulties as impossible as he could for his colleagues.
The Modern Method Practitioners
The main Method Guy currently seems to be Jeremy Strong (once Day-Lewis’s assistant), whose process while filming Succession was so laboriously intensive that it formed the subject of a derisive New Yorker profile, full of quotes from individuals who were either concerned about his conduct (“The toll on himself that worries me,” said Brian Cox) or extremely irritated by it (“I remember him causing others to react with exasperation,” said an anonymous cast member).
The actor says he ‘never intended to stop acting, really’
There are numerous additional cases. Andrew Garfield abstained from sex over half a year while preparing for Silence. Leonardo DiCaprio slept in an animal carcass for The Revenant. There’s a fighting chance that actor Austin Butler continues to talk in the style of Elvis, three years after the movie’s release. All of this, in part, is meant to invoke the dedication with which Day-Lewis approaches his work.
A Noble Yet Challenging Fight
And, although his rebuttal to critics of the Method might be noble, a short publicity tour may prove insufficient to change anyone’s mind, not to mention their practices. Perhaps if he wishes to remind people what method acting is, or to demonstrate what it can achieve, then Day-Lewis’s best bet is to simply start making more films. Surely everyone would support that idea.
