It has been quite some time since the public saw or heard from the acclaimed actor Daniel Day-Lewis. After he statement in 2017 declaring he would cease to pursue acting, prior to the release of Phantom Thread, the actor quietly faded from view. However, during his hiatus, his legend has only grown.
The Legend of His Acting Method
Largely, this legend centers on his preferred approach to roles. As someone known for immerses himself in the roles he plays – for instance, during the Lincoln biopic, he had Steven Spielberg address him as “Mr President” for the entire production – audiences has grown 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 only eat game he hunted during Last of the Mohicans? Did he insist on receiving food via spoon while filming My Left Foot?
Madness in their method: have we fallen out of love with actorly excess?
Now, Daniel Day-Lewis is back to public attention, with some hesitation, promoting his latest movie Anemone. He is taking this chance to express his frustration at how the Method technique is perceived. “I am somewhat annoyed nowadays to hear all kinds of people talking carelessly and saying things like ‘gone full method’, which I think suggests that someone is behaving like a lunatic in a drastic way,” he told a major publication. “Everyone tends to focus on superficial details of the work, and these elements always seem to involve some form of self-flagellation or an experience that causes extreme unease or mental instability. But of course, in the career of an actor, it must principally be about the internal work.”
An Industry of Imitators
Frankly, this sounds as if Day-Lewis has emerged from his retreat only to discover aghast at the world that has been created in his image. When you are widely considered among the best actors to ever work, and your approach involves headbutting a dummy until you break your nose (in Gangs of New York) or spending two days 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 emulate that example by imitating their idol.
Essentially, we now live in a landscape populated by half-cocked imitators of Day-Lewis who want nothing more than to demonstrate the extensive degree of dedication they put into a character. At the shallow end of the pool we have people like Lady Gaga, who was determined to win an Oscar for House of Gucci that she spent the whole campaign trying to convince everyone that she became functionally Italian for a year and a half as preparation.
Then we have Jared Leto, who decided to deeply embed himself in the character of the Joker (for Suicide Squad) by sending “horrifying” gifts to fellow cast members. These, according to various accounts, included dead pigs and rats to anal beads and used condoms, although the actor refuted those worst excesses. Then, of course, we have Jim Carrey, who immersed himself so fully into Andy Kaufman during Man on the Moon that filmmakers succeeded in creating a feature-length documentary from behind-the-scenes footage of him making life as impossible as he could for his colleagues.
The Modern Method Practitioners
The foremost Method Guy at the moment would appear to be Jeremy Strong (once an assistant to Day-Lewis), whose approach during Succession was so rigorously detailed that it became the subject of a critical New Yorker profile, full of quotes from individuals who were worried about his conduct (“It’s the cost on himself concerns me,” said co-star Brian Cox) or annoyed beyond all measure by his actions (“I remember [him] making others to react with exasperation,” said an anonymous cast member).
Daniel Day-Lewis claims he ‘never intended to stop acting, truly’
There are so many other examples. Andrew Garfield abstained from sex over half a year while preparing for Silence. Leonardo DiCaprio slept in a dead animal during The Revenant. There’s a fighting chance that actor Austin Butler still speaks in the style of Elvis, years following 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 Fight
And, while his fightback to critics of the Method could be commendable, a short publicity tour might not be enough to change anyone’s mind, not to mention their practices. Perhaps if he wants to remind people what method acting is, or to show them its potential results, then Day-Lewis’s best bet is to just begin producing additional movies. Surely we could all support that idea.
