It has been quite some time since the public caught a glimpse of Daniel Day-Lewis. After he announcement in 2017 that he would cease to pursue acting, prior to the debut of Phantom Thread, Day-Lewis withdrew from the spotlight. Yet, during his hiatus, his legend has only grown.
The Mythos Surrounding His Method
Largely, this reputation revolves around his preferred style of working. Being an actor who famously immerses himself in the roles he plays – for instance, while filming Lincoln, reportedly asked Steven Spielberg address him as “Mr. President” throughout the shoot – audiences has grown more fascinated with his process. Did he really send messages to co-star Sally Field in character as Lincoln? Did he only eat animals he’d killed during Last of the Mohicans? And did he demand being spoon-fed while filming My Left Foot?
Madness in their method: has the public fallen out of love with over-the-top performances?
Now, Day-Lewis is back to public attention, somewhat reluctantly, promoting his latest movie Anemone. And he is taking this chance to vocalise his frustration at how the Method technique is viewed. “I am somewhat annoyed nowadays when I hear various individuals gobbling off and using phrases like ‘gone full method’, which seems is meant to imply that a person’s acting insane in a drastic way,” he stated to a major publication. “Everyone often concentrate on superficial details of the work, and these elements always seem to involve some form of self-punishment or a situation that imposes upon oneself a severe discomfort or mental instability. But of course, in the life for a performer, it has to principally be about the internal work.”
A World of Imitators
Frankly, this sounds like the actor has come out from seclusion only to discover aghast at the acting community that has been created mirroring his methods. If you’re regarded as one of the greatest actors to ever work, and your approach involves headbutting a dummy to the point of injury (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 fellow performers will want to fill that vacuum by trying to mimic your hero.
In other words, we now live in a landscape full of half-cocked Day-Lewis impersonators who want nothing more than to demonstrate the sheer amount of dedication they put into their roles. At the shallow end of this trend we have people like Lady Gaga, who was determined to earn an Academy Award for House of Gucci that she dedicated the whole campaign attempting to persuade people that she transformed into an Italian native over 18 months as preparation.
Additionally, there is Jared Leto, who decided to deeply embed himself into the role as the Joker (in Suicide Squad) by sending “horrifying” gifts to his castmates. These, according to various accounts, range from dead pigs and rats to intimate objects and used condoms, though the actor refuted the most extreme claims. And then, naturally, there is Jim Carrey, who immersed himself so fully into Andy Kaufman during Man on the Moon that they succeeded in creating a full-length documentary out of B-roll of him making life as impossible as he could for everyone around him.
Contemporary Followers of the Method
The main practitioner of the Method currently seems to be Jeremy Strong (once an assistant to Day-Lewis), whose process while filming Succession was so rigorously detailed that it became the basis of a derisive magazine feature, full of quotes from individuals who were worried for his behaviour (“It’s the cost on himself that worries me,” said Brian Cox) or extremely irritated by it (“I recall him causing others roll their eyes,” stated an unnamed co-star).
The actor claims he ‘never intended to stop acting, really’
We have so many other examples. Andrew Garfield went celibate for six months while preparing for Silence. Leonardo DiCaprio rested inside an animal carcass during The Revenant. There’s a fighting chance that Austin Butler continues to talk in the style of Elvis, years following that film came out. Each of these instances, to some extent, is meant to invoke the dedication in which Day-Lewis approaches his craft.
An Admirable But Uphill Battle
And, although his rebuttal to critics of the Method might be noble, a brief promotional cycle may prove insufficient to change anyone’s mind, not to mention their behaviour. Maybe if he wants to remind people the true essence of the Method, or to demonstrate its potential results, then Day-Lewis’s best bet is to just begin producing more films. Certainly we could all support that idea.
