It has been a long while since anyone caught a glimpse of Daniel Day-Lewis. Following his statement in 2017 that he would cease to pursue acting, prior to the release of Phantom Thread, Day-Lewis quietly faded from view. However, in his absence, his reputation expanded further.
The Legend Surrounding His Method
Primarily, this reputation centers on his favored style of working. As someone known for disappears into his characters – for instance, while filming Lincoln, he had the director call him “Mr President” for the entire production – audiences has grown more fascinated with how he works. Is it true he really send messages to co-star Sally Field as Abraham Lincoln? Was it accurate that he only eat animals he’d killed during The Last of the Mohicans? Did he insist on being spoon-fed for My Left Foot?
Extreme acting methods: has the public lost interest with actorly excess?
Now, Day-Lewis is back in the limelight, somewhat reluctantly, promoting his latest movie Anemone. And he is using this to vocalise his frustration at how the Method technique is perceived. “I’m a little cross these days to hear all kinds of people talking carelessly and using phrases like ‘fully embraced the Method’, which seems suggests that someone is acting insane in an extreme fashion,” he stated to the New York Times. “People tends to focus on superficial details of the work, and those details typically include some sort of self-flagellation or an experience that imposes upon oneself a severe discomfort or psychological strain. But of course, in the life of an actor, it has to mainly focus on the internal work.”
An Industry of Imitators
Frankly, this sounds as if Day-Lewis has come out from his retreat only to discover shocked by the world that has developed in his image. If you’re widely considered among the best performers to ever work, and your approach includes striking a prop to the point of injury (in Gangs of New York) or enduring two days in isolation deprived of sustenance (for In the Name of the Father), it’s natural that fellow performers will attempt to emulate that example 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 demonstrate the sheer amount of dedication they put into a character. At the shallow end of this trend there are performers such as Lady Gaga, who was so desperate to win an Oscar with House of Gucci that she spent the entire promotion attempting to persuade people that she transformed into functionally Italian for a year and a half in preparation.
Then we have Jared Leto, who decided to deeply embed himself into the role as the Joker (for Suicide Squad) by sending “disturbing” gifts to fellow cast members. These, depending on who you ask, range from deceased animals to intimate objects and used condoms, although Leto denied the most extreme claims. And then, of course, there is Jim Carrey, who went so deep into Andy Kaufman during Man on the Moon that filmmakers literally managed to get a full-length documentary out of B-roll of him causing difficulties as impossible as he could for his colleagues.
The Modern Method Practitioners
The foremost Method Guy currently would appear to be Jeremy Strong (formerly Day-Lewis’s assistant), whose process during Succession was so laboriously intensive that it formed the basis of a derisive New Yorker profile, full of quotes from individuals who were either concerned for his behaviour (“The toll on himself concerns me,” said Brian Cox) or annoyed beyond all measure by his actions (“I recall him causing others roll their eyes,” said an anonymous cast member).
Daniel Day-Lewis claims he ‘never intended to retire, really’
There are so many other examples. Andrew Garfield went celibate for six months for Silence. Leonardo DiCaprio slept in an animal carcass during The Revenant. There’s a fighting chance that actor Austin Butler continues to talk in the style of Elvis, three years after the movie’s release. All of this, to some extent, aims to evoke the seriousness in which Day-Lewis approaches his work.
A Noble Yet Challenging Fight
Moreover, although his rebuttal against method detractors might be noble, a short publicity tour may prove insufficient to alter perceptions, not to mention their practices. Maybe if he wishes to remind people what method acting is, or to show them its potential results, then Day-Lewis’s best bet is to simply start making more films. Certainly everyone would get behind that.
