It has been a long while since the public saw or heard from Daniel Day-Lewis. After he announcement in 2017 that he would no longer pursue acting, just before the debut of Phantom Thread, the actor quietly faded from view. Yet, during his hiatus, his reputation has only grown.
The Legend of His Method
Primarily, this reputation centers on his preferred style of working. As someone who famously disappears into his characters – for instance, while filming the Lincoln biopic, reportedly asked Steven Spielberg address him as “Mr President” throughout the shoot – audiences has grown increasingly obsessed with his process. Did he really send messages to co-star Sally Field as Abraham Lincoln? Did he only eat game he hunted for The Last of the Mohicans? And did he demand being spoon-fed while filming My Left Foot?
Madness in their method: have we lost interest with actorly excess?
Now, Daniel Day-Lewis has returned to public attention, with some hesitation, promoting his latest movie Anemone. And he is taking this chance to express his frustration regarding how method acting is viewed. “I am somewhat annoyed these days to hear all kinds of people talking carelessly and using phrases like ‘gone full method’, which seems suggests that someone is behaving like a lunatic in a drastic way,” he stated to the New York Times. “People tends to focus on the less important aspects of acting, and those details always seem to involve some form of self-punishment or a situation that imposes upon oneself extreme unease or mental instability. However, in the life for a performer, it has to mainly focus on the internal work.”
An Industry of Imitators
Frankly, this sounds as if the actor has emerged from seclusion only to discover shocked by the acting community that has been created mirroring his methods. If you’re widely considered one of the greatest performers to ever work, and your approach involves headbutting a dummy to the point of injury (for Gangs of New York) or enduring two days in isolation deprived of sustenance (for In the Name of the Father), it’s natural that fellow performers will want to emulate that example by imitating their idol.
In other words, we now live in an environment populated by half-cocked Day-Lewis impersonators who want nothing more than to demonstrate the extensive degree of effort they invest in a character. At the shallow end of this trend there are performers such as Lady Gaga, who was determined to win an Oscar for House of Gucci that she dedicated the whole campaign attempting to persuade people that she transformed into an Italian native for a year and a half as preparation.
Additionally, there is Jared Leto, who decided to deeply embed himself into the role of the Joker (for Suicide Squad) by sending “horrifying” presents to fellow cast members. These items, depending on who you ask, range from deceased animals to anal beads and personal hygiene products, although the actor refuted those worst excesses. And then, of course, there is Jim Carrey, who immersed himself so fully as Andy Kaufman during Man on the Moon that filmmakers literally managed in creating a feature-length documentary out of B-roll of him causing difficulties as impossible as he could for his colleagues.
Contemporary Followers of the Method
The foremost Method Guy currently would appear to be Jeremy Strong (once an assistant to Day-Lewis), whose process while filming Succession was so laboriously intensive that it became the basis of a critical New Yorker profile, including statements from people who were worried for his behaviour (“It’s the cost on himself that worries me,” remarked Brian Cox) or annoyed beyond all measure by it (“I recall [him] making others to react with exasperation,” said an unnamed co-star).
The actor claims he ‘never intended to stop acting, truly’
We have numerous additional cases. 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 like Elvis Presley, three years after the movie’s release. Each of these instances, in part, is meant to invoke the dedication in which Day-Lewis approaches his craft.
A Noble Yet Challenging Battle
And, although his rebuttal against method detractors could be commendable, a brief promotional cycle may prove insufficient to alter perceptions, not to mention their practices. Maybe if he wants to remind people what method acting is, or to show them its potential results, then the optimal strategy for Day-Lewis is to simply begin producing additional movies. Surely everyone would support that idea.
