It has been a long while since the public caught a glimpse of Daniel Day-Lewis. After he statement in 2017 that he would cease to work as an actor, prior to the debut of The Phantom Thread, Day-Lewis quietly faded from view. However, in his absence, his legend has only grown.
The Legend Surrounding His Acting Method
Largely, this legend revolves around his preferred approach to roles. As someone who famously disappears into his characters – for instance, during the Lincoln biopic, reportedly asked the director call him “Mr President” for the entire production – the world has grown more fascinated with his process. Did he actually sent texts to Sally Field in character as Lincoln? Was it accurate that he consumed solely game he hunted during Last of the Mohicans? And did he insist on receiving food via spoon for My Left Foot?
Madness in their method: has the public lost interest with actorly excess?
Now, Daniel Day-Lewis has returned in the limelight, with some hesitation, promoting his latest movie Anemone. He is using this to express his anger at how method acting is viewed. “I am somewhat annoyed nowadays to hear all kinds of people gobbling off and saying things like ‘gone full method’, which I think is meant to imply that a person’s behaving like a lunatic in a drastic way,” he told a major publication. “People often concentrate on superficial aspects of acting, and these elements typically include some sort of self-punishment or a situation that causes a severe discomfort or mental instability. However, in the career for a performer, it must principally be about the internal work.”
A World Full of Followers
To be honest, this sounds as if the actor has come out from his retreat and found himself aghast at the world that has been created in his image. When you are regarded as among the best performers in history, and your process involves headbutting a dummy to the point of injury (for Gangs of New York) or enduring 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.
Essentially, we now live in an environment full of half-cocked Day-Lewis impersonators who want nothing more than to demonstrate the sheer amount of effort they invest in their roles. At the shallow end of this trend there are performers such as Lady Gaga, who was so desperate to earn an Academy Award with House of Gucci that she spent the whole campaign attempting to persuade people that she became functionally Italian over 18 months as preparation.
Additionally, there is Jared Leto, who decided to immerse himself into the role as the Joker (for Suicide Squad) through sending “horrifying” gifts to fellow cast members. These, according to various accounts, range from dead pigs and rats to intimate objects and used condoms, though Leto denied those worst excesses. And then, naturally, there is Jim Carrey, who went so deep into Andy Kaufman for Man on the Moon that they literally managed to get a feature-length documentary out of B-roll of him making life to the utmost for his colleagues.
The Modern Method Practitioners
The main practitioner of the Method currently would appear to be Jeremy Strong (once Day-Lewis’s assistant), whose approach during Succession was so rigorously detailed that it became the subject of a derisive New Yorker profile, including statements from people who were either concerned about his conduct (“It’s the cost on himself concerns me,” remarked Brian Cox) or annoyed beyond all measure by it (“I remember [him] making others roll their eyes,” said an unnamed co-star).
The actor says he ‘did not plan to retire, truly’
We have numerous additional cases. 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 Austin Butler still speaks like Elvis Presley, three years after 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 Yet Challenging Battle
And, although his rebuttal to critics of the Method could be commendable, a brief promotional cycle may prove insufficient to alter perceptions, not to mention their behaviour. Perhaps if he wishes to make audiences recall what method acting is, or to show them what it can achieve, then Day-Lewis’s best bet is to simply start making more films. Surely we could all get behind that.
