It has been quite some time since anyone caught a glimpse of Daniel Day-Lewis. After he statement in 2017 declaring he would cease to pursue acting, just before the release of The Phantom Thread, the actor quietly faded from view. However, during his hiatus, his legend has only grown.
The Legend Surrounding His Method
Largely, this legend revolves around his favored approach to roles. As someone known for immerses himself in the roles he plays – for instance, while filming the Lincoln biopic, reportedly asked the director call him “Mr President” for the entire production – the world has grown increasingly obsessed with his process. Did he really send texts to Sally Field in character as Lincoln? Was it accurate that he only eat animals he’d killed for The Last of the Mohicans? Did he insist on receiving food via spoon for My Left Foot?
Extreme acting methods: has the public fallen out of love with over-the-top performances?
Now, Day-Lewis is back in the limelight, somewhat reluctantly, for his new film Anemone. And he is using this to vocalise his anger regarding how the Method technique is viewed. “I am somewhat annoyed nowadays to hear all kinds of people gobbling off and using phrases like ‘fully embraced the Method’, which seems is meant to imply that someone is behaving like a lunatic in a drastic way,” he stated to a major publication. “People tends to focus on the less important details of the work, and these elements always seem to involve 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 mainly focus on the inner transformation.”
An Industry Full of Followers
Frankly, this sounds like the actor has come out from seclusion and found himself aghast at the acting community that has been created in his image. If you’re widely considered one of the greatest performers in history, and your approach includes striking a prop to the point of injury (for Gangs of New York) or spending 48 hours in solitary confinement without food or water (for In the Name of the Father), then it stands to reason that fellow performers will attempt to emulate that example by imitating their idol.
In other words, we now live in a landscape full of half-cocked Day-Lewis impersonators who want nothing more than to demonstrate the extensive degree of effort they put into a character. At the shallow end of the pool we have people like Lady Gaga, who was determined to win an Oscar with House of Gucci that she spent the whole campaign attempting to persuade people that she became an Italian native for a year and a half as preparation.
Additionally, there is Jared Leto, who decided to deeply embed himself into the role as the Joker (in Suicide Squad) through sending “disturbing” presents to fellow cast members. These, according to various accounts, range from deceased animals to intimate objects and personal hygiene products, though Leto denied those worst excesses. And then, naturally, there is Jim Carrey, who immersed himself so fully as 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 everyone around him.
Contemporary Followers of the Method
The foremost Method Guy at the moment seems to be Jeremy Strong (once an assistant to Day-Lewis), whose approach while filming Succession was so laboriously intensive that it formed the basis of a derisive New Yorker profile, full of quotes from individuals who were worried about his conduct (“The toll on himself concerns me,” said co-star Brian Cox) or extremely irritated by his actions (“I recall [him] making others roll their eyes,” said an unnamed co-star).
The actor claims he ‘did not plan to retire, truly’
We have so many other examples. Andrew Garfield went celibate for six months for Silence. Leonardo DiCaprio slept in a dead animal during The Revenant. There’s a fighting chance that actor Austin Butler continues to talk like Elvis Presley, years following the movie’s release. All of this, to some extent, aims to evoke the seriousness in which Day-Lewis approaches his craft.
A Noble But Uphill Fight
And, although his rebuttal against method detractors might be noble, a short publicity tour may prove insufficient to alter perceptions, let alone their behaviour. Maybe if he wants to make audiences recall what method acting is, or to show them what it can achieve, then Day-Lewis’s best bet is to just start making more films. Surely everyone would support that idea.
