It has been a long while since anyone caught a glimpse of the acclaimed actor Daniel Day-Lewis. Following his statement in 2017 declaring he would no longer work as an actor, prior to the debut of Phantom Thread, Day-Lewis withdrew from the spotlight. Yet, during his hiatus, his reputation expanded further.
The Legend of His Method
Largely, this reputation centers on his favored style of working. As someone who famously immerses himself in his characters – for instance, during the Lincoln biopic, he had the director call him “Mr President” throughout the shoot – the world has become increasingly obsessed with his process. Did he actually sent messages to co-star Sally Field in character as Lincoln? Did he only eat animals he’d killed for Last of the Mohicans? And did he insist on receiving food via spoon while filming My Left Foot?
Extreme acting methods: has the public fallen out of love with actorly excess?
Now, Day-Lewis has returned in the limelight, somewhat reluctantly, promoting his latest movie Anemone. And he is using this to express his anger at how the Method technique is viewed. “I’m a little cross these days to hear various individuals gobbling off and saying things like ‘gone full method’, which seems suggests that someone is acting insane in a drastic way,” he told the New York Times. “People often concentrate on superficial details of the work, and those details always seem to involve some sort of self-flagellation or an experience that causes a severe discomfort or mental instability. However, in the life of an actor, it must mainly focus on the internal work.”
An Industry of Imitators
To be honest, this sounds as if the actor has emerged from his retreat only to discover shocked by the acting community that has developed mirroring his methods. If you’re widely considered among the best actors to ever work, and your process involves headbutting a dummy until you break your nose (in Gangs of New York) or spending 48 hours in isolation without food or water (for In the Name of the Father), it’s natural that fellow performers will want to fill that vacuum by imitating your hero.
In other words, we now live in an environment populated by half-cocked Day-Lewis impersonators who strive only to demonstrate the sheer amount of effort they invest in their roles. On the milder side of this trend there are performers such as Lady Gaga, who was so desperate to win an Oscar for House of Gucci that she spent the whole campaign attempting to persuade people that she became functionally Italian over 18 months as preparation.
Then we have Jared Leto, who chose to deeply embed himself into the role of the Joker (in Suicide Squad) by sending “horrifying” gifts to fellow cast members. These items, depending on who you ask, included dead pigs and rats to anal beads and used condoms, although the actor refuted those worst excesses. And then, of course, there is Jim Carrey, who immersed himself so fully into Andy Kaufman for Man on the Moon that filmmakers succeeded to get a feature-length documentary from behind-the-scenes footage of him making life to the utmost for his colleagues.
Contemporary Followers of the Method
The foremost Method Guy currently seems to be Jeremy Strong (formerly Day-Lewis’s assistant), whose process while filming Succession was so laboriously intensive that it became the subject of a derisive New Yorker profile, full of quotes from individuals who were worried about his conduct (“The toll on himself concerns me,” said Brian Cox) or annoyed beyond all measure by his actions (“I remember [him] making everyone else to react with exasperation,” said an unnamed co-star).
The actor says he ‘never intended to retire, truly’
There are so many other examples. Andrew Garfield abstained from sex for six months for Silence. Leonardo DiCaprio rested inside a dead animal during The Revenant. There’s a fighting chance that actor Austin Butler still speaks like Elvis Presley, years following that film came out. Each of these instances, in part, aims to evoke the seriousness in which Day-Lewis takes his craft.
An Admirable But Uphill Battle
Moreover, while his fightback to critics of the Method might be noble, a short publicity tour might not be enough to change anyone’s mind, not to mention their behaviour. Maybe if he wants to remind people the true essence of the Method, or to demonstrate its potential results, then the optimal strategy for Day-Lewis is to just start making more films. Certainly everyone would support that idea.
