It’s been a long while since anyone caught a glimpse of Daniel Day-Lewis. After he statement in 2017 declaring he would cease to work as an actor, just before the release of The Phantom Thread, the actor quietly faded from view. Yet, during his hiatus, his legend expanded further.
The Legend of His Method
Largely, this reputation revolves around his preferred style of working. Being an actor who famously disappears into his characters – for example, during the Lincoln biopic, reportedly asked the director call him “Mr. President” throughout the shoot – the world has grown increasingly obsessed with how he works. Is it true he really send messages to co-star Sally Field as Abraham Lincoln? Did he only eat game he hunted for Last of the Mohicans? And did he insist on receiving food via spoon for My Left Foot?
Extreme acting methods: has the public fallen out of love with actorly excess?
Now, Daniel Day-Lewis is back to public attention, with some hesitation, for his new film Anemone. He is using this to vocalise his anger at how the Method technique is perceived. “I’m a little cross nowadays when I hear all kinds of people talking carelessly and saying things like ‘gone full method’, which seems suggests that someone is acting insane in an extreme fashion,” he stated to the New York Times. “People tends to focus on superficial aspects of acting, and those details typically include some form of self-flagellation or a situation that causes a severe discomfort or mental instability. But of course, in the career for a performer, it has to mainly focus on the inner transformation.”
An Industry Full of Followers
To be honest, it appears like the actor has come out from his retreat and found himself aghast at the acting community that has been created mirroring his methods. If you’re regarded as among the best actors in history, and your approach includes striking a prop to the point of injury (for Gangs of New York) or enduring two days in isolation without food or water (during In the Name of the Father), it’s natural that fellow performers will attempt to fill that vacuum by trying to mimic their idol.
In other words, we now live in a landscape full of half-cocked imitators of Day-Lewis who strive only to demonstrate the sheer amount of dedication they invest in their roles. At the shallow end of the pool we have people like Lady Gaga, who was so desperate to earn an Academy Award with House of Gucci that she spent the entire promotion trying to convince everyone that she became an Italian native for a year and a half as preparation.
Then we have Jared Leto, who chose to deeply embed himself in the character of the Joker (in Suicide Squad) through sending “disturbing” gifts to fellow cast members. These, depending on who you ask, included dead pigs and rats to anal beads and personal hygiene products, though the actor refuted the most extreme claims. And then, of course, we have Jim Carrey, who immersed himself so fully into Andy Kaufman during Man on the Moon that filmmakers literally managed to get a feature-length documentary out of B-roll of him making life to the utmost for his colleagues.
Contemporary Method Practitioners
The foremost Method Guy currently would appear to be Jeremy Strong (formerly Day-Lewis’s assistant), whose approach while filming Succession was so rigorously detailed that it became the subject of a critical magazine feature, full of quotes from individuals who were worried for his behaviour (“It’s the cost to himself that worries me,” remarked co-star Brian Cox) or annoyed beyond all measure by it (“I recall him causing others to react with exasperation,” said an anonymous cast member).
Daniel Day-Lewis claims he ‘never intended to retire, truly’
There are 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 still speaks in the style of Elvis, three years after the movie’s release. Each of these instances, to some extent, aims to evoke the seriousness in which Day-Lewis takes his work.
An Admirable Yet Challenging Battle
Moreover, although his rebuttal against method detractors might be noble, a short publicity tour may prove insufficient to change anyone’s mind, let alone their practices. Maybe if he wishes to make audiences recall what method acting is, or to show them its potential results, then Day-Lewis’s best bet is to just begin producing additional movies. Surely we could all support that idea.
