It has been quite some time since the public saw or heard from Daniel Day-Lewis. Following his statement in 2017 that he would no longer work as an actor, just before the debut of Phantom Thread, Day-Lewis withdrew from the spotlight. However, during his hiatus, his legend expanded further.
The Legend Surrounding His Method
Largely, this legend revolves around his preferred style of working. As someone who famously immerses himself in his characters – for example, while filming Lincoln, reportedly asked the director address him as “Mr President” throughout the shoot – audiences has grown increasingly obsessed with his process. Did he actually sent messages to co-star Sally Field as Abraham Lincoln? Was it accurate that he only eat game he hunted for The Last of the Mohicans? And did he demand receiving food via spoon for My Left Foot?
Madness in their method: has the public fallen out of love with actorly excess?
Currently, Daniel Day-Lewis is back to public attention, somewhat reluctantly, promoting his latest movie Anemone. He is using this to vocalise his frustration regarding how method acting is viewed. “I’m a little cross nowadays to hear various individuals talking carelessly and saying things like ‘gone full method’, which seems is meant to imply that a person’s 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 sort of self-punishment or an experience that imposes upon oneself extreme unease or mental instability. But of course, in the career of an actor, it must mainly focus on the inner transformation.”
An Industry Full of Followers
To be honest, it appears as if the actor has emerged from seclusion and found himself shocked by the world that has been created in his image. If you’re widely considered one of the greatest performers to ever work, and your approach includes striking a prop until you break your nose (in Gangs of New York) or spending two days in isolation deprived of sustenance (for In the Name of the Father), then it stands to reason that other actors will attempt to emulate that example by imitating your hero.
In other words, we now live in a landscape full of imperfect Day-Lewis impersonators who strive only to demonstrate the sheer amount of dedication they put into a character. On the milder side of the pool there are performers such as Lady Gaga, who was so desperate 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 chose to immerse himself into the role of the Joker (in Suicide Squad) by sending “horrifying” presents to fellow cast members. These items, according to various accounts, included dead pigs and rats to intimate objects and used condoms, though Leto denied those worst excesses. And then, of course, there is Jim Carrey, who immersed himself so fully into Andy Kaufman for Man on the Moon that filmmakers literally managed in creating a feature-length documentary out of B-roll of him making life to the utmost for his colleagues.
The Modern Method Practitioners
The main Method Guy currently seems to be Jeremy Strong (once Day-Lewis’s assistant), whose process during Succession was so laboriously intensive that it formed the subject of a critical New Yorker profile, full of quotes from individuals who were worried for his behaviour (“The toll to himself concerns me,” remarked co-star Brian Cox) or extremely irritated by his actions (“I recall [him] making everyone else roll their eyes,” stated an unnamed co-star).
The actor claims he ‘did not plan to stop acting, really’
There are numerous additional cases. Andrew Garfield abstained from sex for six months while preparing for Silence. Leonardo DiCaprio slept in an animal carcass for The Revenant. There’s a fighting chance that actor Austin Butler still speaks like Elvis Presley, years following the movie’s release. All of this, in part, aims to evoke the dedication with which Day-Lewis approaches his work.
An Admirable But Uphill Battle
Moreover, although his rebuttal to critics of the Method might be noble, a short publicity tour may prove insufficient to alter perceptions, let alone their behaviour. Maybe if he wants to remind people what method acting is, or to show them what it can achieve, then Day-Lewis’s best bet is to simply begin producing additional movies. Surely we could all support that idea.
