It has been quite some time since the public saw or heard from Daniel Day-Lewis. After he statement in 2017 declaring he would no longer work as an actor, prior to the debut of The Phantom Thread, the actor quietly faded from view. Yet, in his absence, his reputation has only grown.
The Legend of His Method
Primarily, this legend revolves around his preferred approach to roles. As someone who famously immerses himself in the roles he plays – for instance, while filming Lincoln, he had Steven Spielberg address him as “Mr. President” for the entire production – audiences has become more fascinated with his process. Is it true he actually sent messages to co-star Sally Field as Abraham Lincoln? Did he consumed solely animals he’d killed during Last of the Mohicans? And did he insist on receiving food via spoon while filming My Left Foot?
Madness in their method: have we lost interest with over-the-top performances?
Now, Day-Lewis is back in the limelight, with some hesitation, for his new film Anemone. He is taking this chance to express his frustration regarding how method acting is perceived. “I am somewhat annoyed nowadays to hear various individuals gobbling off and saying things like ‘fully embraced the Method’, which I think is meant to imply that someone is acting insane in an extreme fashion,” he told a major publication. “People often concentrate on the less important details of the work, and those details always seem to involve some form of self-punishment or an experience that imposes upon oneself a severe discomfort or mental instability. However, in the life of an actor, it has to mainly focus on the internal work.”
A World Full of Followers
To be honest, it appears as if Day-Lewis has come out from his retreat and found himself shocked by the world that has been created in his image. If you’re regarded as one of the greatest actors in history, and your process includes headbutting a dummy to the point of injury (for Gangs of New York) or enduring 48 hours in isolation without food or water (for In the Name of the Father), it’s natural that fellow performers will want to fill that vacuum by imitating your hero.
Essentially, we now live in an environment populated by half-cocked imitators of Day-Lewis who want nothing more than to show the world the extensive degree of effort they put into a character. On the milder side of this trend there are performers such as Lady Gaga, who was determined to win an Oscar for House of Gucci that she spent the entire promotion trying to convince everyone that she transformed into an Italian native for a year and a half as preparation.
Then we have Jared Leto, who chose to deeply embed himself into the role of the Joker (for Suicide Squad) by sending “horrifying” presents to fellow cast members. These, depending on who you ask, included deceased animals to intimate objects and used condoms, although Leto denied those worst excesses. And then, naturally, there is Jim Carrey, who immersed himself so fully as Andy Kaufman for Man on the Moon that filmmakers literally managed in creating a full-length documentary out of B-roll of him making life as impossible as he could for his colleagues.
The Modern Followers of the Method
The main Method Guy currently would appear to be Jeremy Strong (once Day-Lewis’s assistant), whose process during Succession was so laboriously intensive that it formed the subject of a derisive New Yorker profile, including statements from individuals who were worried for his behaviour (“It’s the cost to himself concerns me,” remarked Brian Cox) or extremely irritated by his actions (“I recall him causing others to react with exasperation,” said an unnamed co-star).
The actor claims he ‘did not plan to stop acting, really’
We have so many other examples. Andrew Garfield abstained from sex over half a year for Silence. Leonardo DiCaprio slept in a dead animal during The Revenant. There’s a fighting chance that actor Austin Butler still speaks like Elvis Presley, three years after the movie’s release. Each of these instances, to some extent, aims to evoke the dedication with which Day-Lewis approaches his work.
An Admirable Yet Challenging Battle
Moreover, while his fightback to critics of the Method might be noble, a brief promotional cycle might not be enough to alter perceptions, not to mention their practices. Perhaps if he wants to remind people what method acting is, or to demonstrate what it can achieve, then the optimal strategy for Day-Lewis is to simply start making more films. Certainly everyone would support that idea.
