It’s been a long while since anyone saw or heard from Daniel Day-Lewis. After he statement in 2017 declaring he would cease to pursue acting, just before the debut of Phantom Thread, the actor quietly faded from view. However, during his hiatus, his legend has only grown.
The Mythos Surrounding His Method
Primarily, this reputation revolves around his favored approach to roles. As someone who famously disappears into the roles he plays – for example, during Lincoln, he had Steven Spielberg call him “Mr President” throughout the shoot – the world has grown more fascinated with his process. Did he really send messages to co-star Sally Field in character as Lincoln? Was it accurate that he consumed solely animals he’d killed for The Last of the Mohicans? And did he insist on receiving food via spoon for My Left Foot?
Madness in their method: has the public lost interest with actorly excess?
Now, Daniel Day-Lewis has returned in the limelight, somewhat reluctantly, promoting his latest movie Anemone. And he is using this to vocalise his anger regarding how method acting is viewed. “I’m a little cross these days when I hear various individuals talking carelessly and using phrases like ‘fully embraced the Method’, which seems suggests that someone is behaving like a lunatic in a drastic way,” he told the New York Times. “People often concentrate on the less important details of the work, and these elements typically include some sort of self-punishment or an experience that imposes upon oneself a severe discomfort or mental instability. However, in the career of an actor, it must principally be about the internal work.”
An Industry of Imitators
To be honest, this sounds as if the actor has come out from seclusion and found himself shocked by the acting community that has developed mirroring his methods. When you are widely considered one of the greatest performers in history, and your approach involves headbutting a dummy to the point of injury (for Gangs of New York) or enduring 48 hours in isolation without food or water (during In the Name of the Father), then it stands to reason that other actors will attempt to fill that vacuum by trying to mimic their idol.
In other words, we now live in a landscape full of half-cocked Day-Lewis impersonators who want nothing more than to demonstrate the sheer amount of dedication they invest in a character. On the milder side of this trend we have people like Lady Gaga, who was so desperate to win an Oscar for House of Gucci that she dedicated the entire promotion trying to convince everyone that she became functionally Italian for a year and a half in preparation.
Then we have Jared Leto, who chose to deeply embed himself into the role of the Joker (for Suicide Squad) through sending “horrifying” presents to his castmates. These, according to various accounts, range from deceased animals to intimate objects and used condoms, although the actor refuted the most extreme claims. And then, naturally, there is Jim Carrey, who went so deep as Andy Kaufman during Man on the Moon that they literally managed in creating a full-length documentary from behind-the-scenes footage of him causing difficulties to the utmost for his colleagues.
Contemporary Method Practitioners
The foremost Method Guy currently seems to be Jeremy Strong (once Day-Lewis’s assistant), whose process during Succession was so rigorously detailed that it formed the subject of a critical magazine feature, full of quotes from people who were worried for his behaviour (“It’s the cost to himself that worries me,” said Brian Cox) or extremely irritated by it (“I recall him causing everyone else to react with exasperation,” said an anonymous cast member).
The actor says he ‘did not plan to stop acting, really’
There are numerous additional cases. Andrew Garfield abstained from sex over half a year for Silence. Leonardo DiCaprio slept in an animal carcass during The Revenant. There’s a fighting chance that actor Austin Butler still speaks like Elvis Presley, three years after that film came out. All of this, in part, aims to evoke the dedication in which Day-Lewis approaches his craft.
A Noble Yet Challenging Fight
Moreover, 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 make audiences recall the true essence of the Method, or to demonstrate what it can achieve, then Day-Lewis’s best bet is to simply begin producing additional movies. Surely we could all support that idea.
