It has been quite some time since the public caught a glimpse of Daniel Day-Lewis. Following his announcement in 2017 declaring he would cease to work as an actor, just before the release of The Phantom Thread, the actor quietly faded from view. Yet, during his hiatus, his reputation expanded further.
The Legend of His Method
Largely, this legend centers on his preferred approach to roles. Being an actor who famously disappears into his characters – for instance, while filming the Lincoln biopic, he had the director call him “Mr. President” for the entire production – the world has become increasingly obsessed with his process. Is it true he actually sent messages to co-star Sally Field as Abraham Lincoln? Was it accurate that he only eat animals he’d killed during Last of the Mohicans? And did he insist on receiving food via spoon for My Left Foot?
Extreme acting methods: has the public lost interest with actorly excess?
Currently, Daniel Day-Lewis is back to public attention, somewhat reluctantly, promoting his latest movie Anemone. He is taking this chance to express his frustration regarding how method acting is perceived. “I am somewhat annoyed nowadays to hear various individuals gobbling off and using phrases like ‘fully embraced the Method’, which I think is meant to imply that someone is behaving like a lunatic in an extreme fashion,” he told the New York Times. “People often concentrate on the less important details of the work, and those details typically include some form of self-flagellation or a situation that imposes upon oneself extreme unease or psychological strain. But of course, in the life of an actor, it has to principally be about the internal work.”
A World of Imitators
Frankly, it appears as if the actor has emerged from his retreat only to discover shocked by the world that has been created in his image. If you’re regarded as among the best performers to ever work, and your approach includes headbutting a dummy until you break your nose (for Gangs of New York) or enduring two days in solitary confinement without food or water (during In the Name of the Father), then it stands to reason that fellow performers will attempt to fill that vacuum by trying to mimic your hero.
Essentially, we now live in a landscape populated by half-cocked Day-Lewis impersonators who want nothing more than to demonstrate the sheer amount of effort they put into their roles. On the milder side of this trend there are performers such as Lady Gaga, who was determined to win an Oscar with House of Gucci that she dedicated the entire promotion attempting to persuade people that she became functionally Italian for a year and a half in preparation.
Additionally, there is Jared Leto, who chose to deeply embed himself into the role as the Joker (for Suicide Squad) through sending “horrifying” presents to his castmates. These, depending on who you ask, included dead pigs and rats to intimate objects and used condoms, although the actor refuted the most extreme claims. Then, of course, there is Jim Carrey, who went so deep as Andy Kaufman for Man on the Moon that they succeeded in creating a feature-length documentary from behind-the-scenes footage of him causing difficulties as impossible as he could for everyone around him.
The Modern Method Practitioners
The foremost Method Guy currently seems to be Jeremy Strong (once an assistant to Day-Lewis), whose approach while filming Succession was so rigorously detailed that it formed the subject of a derisive magazine feature, full of quotes from individuals who were worried about his conduct (“It’s the cost on himself concerns me,” said co-star Brian Cox) or extremely irritated by it (“I remember [him] making others roll their eyes,” stated an unnamed co-star).
Daniel Day-Lewis says he ‘never intended to retire, truly’
We have so many other examples. Andrew Garfield abstained from sex over half a year while preparing 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 the movie’s release. All of this, in part, is meant to invoke the seriousness with which Day-Lewis takes his work.
An Admirable But Uphill Fight
And, while his fightback to critics of the Method could be commendable, a brief promotional cycle may prove insufficient to alter perceptions, let alone their practices. Maybe if he wishes to make audiences recall the true essence of the Method, or to show them what it can achieve, then the optimal strategy for Day-Lewis is to simply begin producing more films. Certainly everyone would get behind that.
