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, just before the debut of Phantom Thread, the actor withdrew from the spotlight. Yet, in his absence, his reputation expanded further.
The Legend Surrounding His Acting Method
Largely, this reputation revolves around his favored approach to roles. As someone known for immerses himself in his characters – for instance, while filming the Lincoln biopic, reportedly asked Steven Spielberg address him as “Mr. President” for the entire production – audiences has become increasingly obsessed with his process. Is it true he actually sent texts to Sally Field as Abraham Lincoln? Did he only eat game he hunted for The Last of the Mohicans? Did he demand receiving food via spoon while filming My Left Foot?
Madness in their method: has the public lost interest with actorly excess?
Now, Day-Lewis is back in the limelight, somewhat reluctantly, for his new film Anemone. And he is taking this chance to express his frustration regarding how method acting is viewed. “I am somewhat annoyed nowadays to hear various individuals talking carelessly and saying things like ‘fully embraced the Method’, which I think suggests that someone is behaving like a lunatic in an extreme fashion,” he stated to a major publication. “People tends to focus on the less important details of the work, and those details always seem to involve some sort of self-flagellation or a situation that causes a severe discomfort or mental instability. However, in the career for a performer, it has to principally be about the inner transformation.”
An Industry Full of Followers
To be honest, it appears as if Day-Lewis has emerged from his retreat and found himself shocked by the world that has been created in his image. If you’re regarded as one of the greatest performers to ever work, and your process involves headbutting a dummy until you break your nose (for Gangs of New York) or enduring two days in isolation without food or water (during In the Name of the Father), it’s natural that fellow performers will attempt to fill that vacuum by imitating their idol.
In other words, we exist in a landscape populated by imperfect imitators of Day-Lewis who want nothing more than to demonstrate the sheer amount of dedication they invest in 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 with House of Gucci that she dedicated the whole campaign attempting to persuade people 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 as the Joker (in Suicide Squad) through sending “horrifying” presents to his castmates. These, depending on who you ask, included deceased animals to intimate objects and used condoms, although Leto denied those worst excesses. Then, of course, we have Jim Carrey, who immersed himself so fully 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 everyone around him.
The Modern Method Practitioners
The main practitioner of the Method at the moment seems to be Jeremy Strong (formerly an assistant to Day-Lewis), whose approach while filming Succession was so rigorously detailed that it became the subject of a derisive New Yorker profile, including statements from individuals who were either concerned about his conduct (“It’s the cost to himself that worries me,” remarked co-star Brian Cox) or extremely irritated by his actions (“I remember [him] making everyone else roll their eyes,” said an unnamed co-star).
Daniel Day-Lewis claims he ‘did not plan to retire, really’
There are so many other examples. Andrew Garfield abstained from sex over half a year for Silence. Leonardo DiCaprio slept in an animal carcass for The Revenant. There’s a fighting chance that Austin Butler still speaks in the style of Elvis, years following that film came out. Each of these instances, to some extent, is meant to invoke the seriousness in which Day-Lewis takes his craft.
An Admirable Yet Challenging Fight
And, although his rebuttal 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 wishes to make audiences recall what method acting is, or to demonstrate what it can achieve, then Day-Lewis’s best bet is to just begin producing more films. Surely we could all support that idea.
