It’s been a long while since the public caught a glimpse of the acclaimed actor Daniel Day-Lewis. Following his announcement in 2017 that he would no longer work as an actor, just before the release of The Phantom Thread, Day-Lewis quietly faded from view. However, in his absence, his legend has only grown.
The Legend of His Acting Method
Largely, this legend centers on his preferred style of working. As someone who famously immerses himself in his characters – for instance, during Lincoln, reportedly asked the director address him as “Mr President” throughout the shoot – the world has become increasingly obsessed with his process. Is it true he actually sent texts to Sally Field in character as Lincoln? Did he only eat animals he’d killed during The Last of the Mohicans? And did he insist on receiving food via spoon for My Left Foot?
Madness in their method: have we fallen out of love with actorly excess?
Now, Day-Lewis is back in the limelight, somewhat reluctantly, for his new film Anemone. And he is using this to express his frustration regarding how method acting is viewed. “I am somewhat annoyed nowadays when I hear all kinds of people talking carelessly and using phrases like ‘gone full method’, which seems is meant to imply that someone is behaving like a lunatic in a drastic way,” he told a major publication. “People often concentrate on superficial details of the work, and those details always seem to involve some form of self-punishment or an experience that imposes upon oneself extreme unease or psychological strain. But of course, in the career for a performer, it must principally be about the internal work.”
An Industry of Imitators
To be honest, this sounds as if Day-Lewis has emerged from seclusion and found himself aghast at the acting community that has developed mirroring his methods. If you’re widely considered one of the greatest performers to ever work, and your process involves striking a prop to the point of injury (for Gangs of New York) or enduring 48 hours in solitary confinement deprived of sustenance (for In the Name of the Father), it’s natural that other actors will want to fill that vacuum by imitating your hero.
Essentially, we now live in an environment populated by imperfect Day-Lewis impersonators who strive only to demonstrate the extensive degree of dedication they invest in their roles. On the milder side of this trend there are performers such as Lady Gaga, who was determined to earn an Academy Award for House of Gucci that she dedicated the entire promotion attempting to persuade people that she transformed into functionally Italian for a year and a half as preparation.
Then we have Jared Leto, who decided to immerse himself in the character of the Joker (for Suicide Squad) by sending “disturbing” presents to his castmates. These items, depending on who you ask, included deceased animals to intimate objects and used condoms, though the actor refuted the most extreme claims. And then, naturally, we have Jim Carrey, who immersed himself so fully into Andy Kaufman for Man on the Moon that filmmakers succeeded to get a feature-length documentary out of B-roll of him causing difficulties as impossible as he could 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 about his conduct (“It’s the cost to himself concerns me,” remarked Brian Cox) or annoyed beyond all measure by his actions (“I recall [him] making others to react with exasperation,” said an unnamed co-star).
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 slept in a dead animal for The Revenant. There’s a fighting chance that actor Austin Butler continues to talk like Elvis Presley, three years after that film came out. All of this, in part, is meant to invoke the dedication with which Day-Lewis approaches his work.
A Noble Yet Challenging Fight
And, while his fightback to critics of the Method could be commendable, a short publicity tour might not be enough to alter perceptions, let alone their behaviour. Maybe if he wants to make audiences recall what method acting is, or to demonstrate its potential results, then the optimal strategy for Day-Lewis is to just begin producing more films. Certainly everyone would support that idea.
