It has been a long while since the public caught a glimpse of Daniel Day-Lewis. After he statement in 2017 declaring he would no longer work as an actor, prior to the release of The Phantom Thread, the actor quietly faded from view. However, during his hiatus, his legend has only grown.
The Legend of His Method
Primarily, this reputation revolves around his preferred style of working. As someone who famously immerses himself in the roles he plays – for instance, during Lincoln, he had the director call him “Mr. President” for the entire production – audiences has grown increasingly obsessed with how he works. Is it true he really send texts to Sally Field in character as Lincoln? Did he consumed solely animals he’d killed during Last of the Mohicans? Did he demand being spoon-fed while filming My Left Foot?
Extreme acting methods: has the public fallen out of love with over-the-top performances?
Now, Day-Lewis has returned to public attention, somewhat reluctantly, for his new film Anemone. He is taking this chance to vocalise his frustration regarding how method acting is viewed. “I am somewhat annoyed these days to hear various individuals talking carelessly and using phrases like ‘fully embraced the Method’, which I think suggests that someone is behaving like a lunatic in an extreme fashion,” he told the New York Times. “People tends to focus on superficial aspects of acting, and those details typically include some form of self-flagellation or an experience that causes extreme unease or psychological strain. However, in the career for a performer, it must mainly focus on the inner transformation.”
A World Full of Followers
Frankly, this sounds like the actor has emerged from his retreat only to discover shocked by the world that has developed in his image. When you are widely considered among the best performers in history, and your approach involves headbutting a dummy until you break your nose (in Gangs of New York) or spending 48 hours in solitary confinement deprived of sustenance (during 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 exist in a landscape populated by imperfect Day-Lewis impersonators who want nothing more than to demonstrate the sheer amount of dedication they invest in a character. At the shallow end of the pool there are performers such as Lady Gaga, who was so desperate to win an Oscar for House of Gucci that she spent the entire promotion attempting to persuade people that she became functionally Italian for a year and a half in preparation.
Then we have Jared Leto, who decided to immerse himself in the character as the Joker (in Suicide Squad) by sending “disturbing” gifts to his castmates. These, according to various accounts, range from dead pigs and rats to anal beads and used condoms, although the actor refuted the most extreme claims. Then, of course, we have Jim Carrey, who went so deep into Andy Kaufman during Man on the Moon that they literally managed in creating a feature-length documentary from behind-the-scenes footage 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 (once an assistant to Day-Lewis), whose approach while filming Succession was so laboriously intensive that it became the subject of a critical New Yorker profile, full of quotes from people who were worried about his conduct (“The toll on himself concerns me,” said Brian Cox) or extremely irritated by it (“I recall him causing everyone else to react with exasperation,” stated an unnamed co-star).
The actor says he ‘never intended to retire, really’
We have numerous additional cases. Andrew Garfield abstained from sex over half a year for Silence. Leonardo DiCaprio rested inside an animal carcass during The Revenant. It’s quite possible that Austin Butler still speaks like Elvis Presley, years following the movie’s release. Each of these instances, to some extent, is meant to invoke the seriousness with which Day-Lewis approaches his craft.
An Admirable But Uphill Battle
Moreover, although his rebuttal against method detractors might be noble, a short publicity tour might not be enough to change anyone’s mind, not to mention their practices. Perhaps if he wishes to remind people what method acting is, or to show them what it can achieve, then Day-Lewis’s best bet is to just begin producing additional movies. Certainly we could all get behind that.
