It has been a long while since anyone caught a glimpse of the acclaimed actor Daniel Day-Lewis. After he announcement in 2017 declaring he would cease to pursue acting, prior to the release of The Phantom Thread, Day-Lewis quietly faded from view. However, during his hiatus, his legend has only grown.
The Legend Surrounding His Method
Largely, this legend centers on his favored approach to roles. As someone who famously disappears into the roles he plays – for example, during Lincoln, he had the director call him “Mr President” throughout the shoot – the world has become increasingly obsessed with how he works. Is it true he really send messages to co-star Sally Field as Abraham Lincoln? Was it accurate that he consumed solely game he hunted for The Last of the Mohicans? And did he demand being spoon-fed for My Left Foot?
Extreme acting methods: has the public fallen out of love with over-the-top performances?
Now, Day-Lewis has returned 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 these days when I hear various individuals gobbling off and using phrases like ‘gone full 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 tends to focus on superficial aspects of acting, and those details always seem to involve some sort of self-punishment or an experience that imposes upon oneself a severe discomfort or psychological strain. However, in the career for a performer, it has to principally be about the internal work.”
An Industry of Imitators
Frankly, it appears like Day-Lewis has emerged from his retreat only to discover shocked by the world that has developed in his image. If you’re widely considered among the best actors to ever work, and your process involves striking a prop until you break your nose (in Gangs of New York) or enduring two days in isolation deprived of sustenance (for In the Name of the Father), then it stands to reason that fellow performers will attempt to emulate that example by imitating your hero.
In other words, we now live in a landscape populated by imperfect Day-Lewis impersonators who want nothing more than to show the world the extensive degree of dedication they invest in a character. At the shallow end of this trend we have people like Lady Gaga, who was so desperate to win an Oscar for House of Gucci that she spent the whole campaign trying to convince everyone that she became functionally Italian for a year and a half in preparation.
Then we have Jared Leto, who decided to deeply embed himself into the role of the Joker (for Suicide Squad) through sending “horrifying” presents to his castmates. These items, according to various accounts, included deceased animals to anal beads and personal hygiene products, 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 filmmakers succeeded in creating a feature-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 foremost Method Guy at the moment seems to be Jeremy Strong (once Day-Lewis’s assistant), whose process while filming Succession was so rigorously detailed that it formed the subject of a critical New Yorker profile, full of quotes from individuals who were worried about his conduct (“It’s the cost to himself concerns me,” remarked co-star Brian Cox) or annoyed beyond all measure by it (“I recall [him] making everyone else roll their eyes,” stated an unnamed co-star).
Daniel Day-Lewis says he ‘never intended to stop acting, really’
We have numerous additional cases. Andrew Garfield went celibate for six months for Silence. Leonardo DiCaprio rested inside a dead animal 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. All of this, to some extent, is meant to invoke the seriousness with which Day-Lewis takes his work.
An Admirable But Uphill Battle
Moreover, while his fightback to critics of the Method might be noble, a brief promotional cycle may prove insufficient to change anyone’s mind, let alone their practices. Perhaps if he wishes to remind people what method acting is, or to demonstrate its potential results, then the optimal strategy for Day-Lewis is to simply start making additional movies. Surely everyone would support that idea.
