It’s been quite some time since anyone caught a glimpse of Daniel Day-Lewis. After he announcement in 2017 that he would no longer pursue acting, prior to the debut of The Phantom Thread, the actor withdrew from the spotlight. Yet, in his absence, his reputation expanded further.
The Mythos of His Method
Largely, this reputation revolves around his preferred style of working. Being an actor known for immerses himself in his characters – for example, while filming the Lincoln biopic, he had Steven Spielberg address him as “Mr. President” for the entire production – audiences has become more fascinated with how he works. Is it true he actually sent messages to co-star Sally Field as Abraham Lincoln? Did he consumed solely animals he’d killed for The Last of the Mohicans? And did he demand receiving food via spoon for My Left Foot?
Extreme acting methods: has the public lost interest with actorly excess?
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 frustration regarding how method acting is perceived. “I am somewhat annoyed nowadays when I hear various individuals gobbling off and saying things like ‘fully embraced the Method’, which I think is meant to imply that someone is behaving like a lunatic in a drastic way,” he told the New York Times. “Everyone tends to focus on the less important details of the work, and those details typically include some form of self-punishment or a situation that causes a severe discomfort or mental instability. But of course, in the career for a performer, it has to mainly focus on the internal work.”
An Industry of Imitators
Frankly, this sounds as if the actor has come out from his retreat and found himself aghast at the world that has been created mirroring his methods. If you’re widely considered one of the greatest performers in history, and your process includes striking a prop until you break your nose (in Gangs of New York) or spending 48 hours in solitary confinement without food or water (during In the Name of the Father), it’s natural that other actors will attempt to fill that vacuum by trying to mimic their idol.
In other words, we exist in an environment populated by imperfect imitators of Day-Lewis who strive only to demonstrate the sheer amount of dedication they put into their roles. At the shallow end 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 whole campaign attempting to persuade people that she became an Italian native for a year and a half in preparation.
Then we have Jared Leto, who chose to deeply embed himself in the character of the Joker (for Suicide Squad) by sending “horrifying” gifts to his castmates. These items, depending on who you ask, included dead pigs and rats to anal beads and personal hygiene products, although Leto denied those worst excesses. And then, of course, we have Jim Carrey, who immersed himself so fully into Andy Kaufman during Man on the Moon that filmmakers literally managed to get a full-length documentary from behind-the-scenes footage of him causing difficulties as impossible as he could for his colleagues.
Contemporary Followers of the Method
The main Method Guy currently seems to be Jeremy Strong (formerly Day-Lewis’s assistant), whose approach while filming Succession was so laboriously intensive that it became the basis of a critical magazine feature, full of quotes from people who were worried for his behaviour (“It’s the cost on himself that worries me,” remarked Brian Cox) or extremely irritated by his actions (“I recall him causing everyone else roll their eyes,” said an anonymous cast member).
The actor says he ‘did not plan to stop acting, truly’
There are so many other examples. Andrew Garfield abstained from sex for six months for Silence. Leonardo DiCaprio rested inside a dead animal for The Revenant. There’s a fighting chance that Austin Butler still speaks like Elvis Presley, three years after the movie’s release. All of this, in part, is meant to invoke the seriousness in which Day-Lewis approaches his craft.
An Admirable Yet Challenging Battle
Moreover, although his rebuttal to critics of the Method might be noble, a brief promotional cycle may prove insufficient to change anyone’s mind, not to mention their behaviour. Maybe if he wishes to make audiences recall the true essence of the Method, or to show them its potential results, then Day-Lewis’s best bet is to simply begin producing additional movies. Certainly we could all support that idea.
