It has been a long while since anyone saw or heard from the acclaimed actor Daniel Day-Lewis. Following his statement in 2017 that he would cease to work as an actor, just before the release of The Phantom Thread, Day-Lewis withdrew from the spotlight. Yet, in his absence, his reputation expanded further.
The Legend of His Method
Primarily, this reputation revolves around his preferred style of working. Being an actor who famously disappears into his characters – for instance, during the Lincoln biopic, he had Steven Spielberg call him “Mr President” throughout the shoot – the world has grown increasingly obsessed with how he works. Did he actually sent messages to co-star Sally Field as Abraham Lincoln? Did he consumed solely animals he’d killed for Last of the Mohicans? And did he insist on being spoon-fed for My Left Foot?
Extreme acting methods: has the public fallen out of love with actorly excess?
Currently, Day-Lewis is back in the limelight, somewhat reluctantly, for his new film Anemone. He is taking this chance 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 saying things like ‘fully embraced the Method’, which I think is meant to imply that someone is behaving like a lunatic in a drastic way,” he stated to a major publication. “People tends to focus on superficial aspects of acting, and these elements typically include some sort of self-flagellation or a situation that imposes upon oneself a severe discomfort or mental instability. But of course, in the career of an actor, it must principally be about the internal work.”
A World of Imitators
Frankly, this sounds like Day-Lewis has emerged from seclusion only to discover aghast at the acting community that has developed mirroring his methods. When you are regarded as one of the greatest performers in history, and your approach includes striking a prop to the point of injury (in Gangs of New York) or enduring 48 hours in isolation without food or water (for In the Name of the Father), then it stands to reason that fellow performers will want to fill that vacuum by trying to mimic their idol.
In other words, we now live in an environment populated by half-cocked Day-Lewis impersonators who strive only to show the world the extensive degree of dedication they put into their roles. At the shallow end of the pool we have people like Lady Gaga, who was determined to win an Oscar with House of Gucci that she spent the whole campaign attempting to persuade people that she transformed into functionally Italian for a year and a half as preparation.
Additionally, there is Jared Leto, who chose to deeply embed himself in the character as the Joker (for Suicide Squad) through sending “horrifying” gifts to fellow cast members. These, depending on who you ask, included deceased animals to intimate objects and personal hygiene products, though the actor refuted those worst excesses. Then, naturally, we have Jim Carrey, who immersed himself so fully into Andy Kaufman for Man on the Moon that filmmakers literally managed to get a feature-length documentary out of B-roll of him making life as impossible as he could for his colleagues.
The Modern Method Practitioners
The foremost Method Guy at the moment seems to be Jeremy Strong (formerly an assistant to Day-Lewis), whose process while filming Succession was so rigorously detailed that it formed the basis of a derisive magazine feature, 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 remember [him] making everyone else roll their eyes,” said an anonymous cast member).
The actor says he ‘never intended to stop acting, really’
We have so many other examples. Andrew Garfield went celibate for six months for Silence. Leonardo DiCaprio rested inside a dead animal during The Revenant. It’s quite possible that Austin Butler still speaks like Elvis Presley, three years after that film came out. All of this, to some extent, is meant to invoke the seriousness in which Day-Lewis approaches his work.
A Noble But Uphill Fight
And, while his fightback to critics of the Method might be noble, a brief promotional cycle might not be enough to alter perceptions, not to mention their behaviour. Maybe if he wants to remind people the true essence of the Method, or to demonstrate what it can achieve, then Day-Lewis’s best bet is to just begin producing additional movies. Certainly we could all support that idea.
