It’s been a long while since anyone saw or heard from the acclaimed actor Daniel Day-Lewis. Following his announcement in 2017 that he would cease to work as an actor, just before the release of 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 reputation revolves around his preferred approach to roles. Being an actor who famously disappears into the roles he plays – for example, while filming the Lincoln biopic, he had the director call him “Mr President” for the entire production – audiences has become more fascinated with his process. Did he actually sent messages to co-star Sally Field in character as Lincoln? Did he only eat animals he’d killed for 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 actorly excess?
Now, Day-Lewis has returned to public attention, with some hesitation, promoting his latest movie Anemone. And he is taking this chance to express his anger regarding how method acting is viewed. “I’m a little cross these days to hear all kinds of people gobbling off and using phrases like ‘gone full method’, which seems suggests that someone is acting insane in an extreme fashion,” he told the New York Times. “Everyone often concentrate on the less important details of the work, and those details always seem to involve some form of self-flagellation or an experience that causes extreme unease or mental instability. However, in the life for a performer, it must principally be about the internal work.”
A World Full of Followers
To be honest, it appears as if the actor has come out from his retreat only to discover shocked by the world that has been created mirroring his methods. If you’re widely considered among the best performers to ever work, and your process includes striking a prop until you break your nose (for Gangs of New York) or enduring two days in solitary confinement deprived of sustenance (for In the Name of the Father), it’s natural that other actors will attempt to fill that vacuum by trying to mimic your hero.
Essentially, we now live in an environment populated by half-cocked Day-Lewis impersonators who strive only to show the world the sheer amount of dedication 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 whole campaign trying to convince everyone that she became functionally Italian for a year and a half as preparation.
Then we have Jared Leto, who decided to deeply embed himself into the role as the Joker (for Suicide Squad) through sending “horrifying” gifts to fellow cast members. These, depending on who you ask, included dead pigs and rats to intimate objects and personal hygiene products, though Leto denied those worst excesses. Then, of course, we have Jim Carrey, who went so deep as Andy Kaufman for Man on the Moon that filmmakers succeeded to get a feature-length documentary from behind-the-scenes footage of him making life as impossible as he could for everyone around him.
The Modern Method Practitioners
The main practitioner of the Method currently seems to be Jeremy Strong (formerly an assistant to Day-Lewis), whose approach during Succession was so rigorously detailed that it formed the subject of a derisive magazine feature, full of quotes from people who were either concerned for his behaviour (“The toll to himself concerns me,” said co-star Brian Cox) or annoyed beyond all measure by it (“I remember [him] making everyone else to react with exasperation,” stated an anonymous cast member).
The actor claims he ‘never intended to retire, really’
We have so many other examples. Andrew Garfield went celibate for six months for Silence. Leonardo DiCaprio slept in an animal carcass during The Revenant. It’s quite possible that Austin Butler continues to talk like Elvis Presley, years following the movie’s release. Each of these instances, to some extent, aims to evoke the seriousness with which Day-Lewis approaches his craft.
An Admirable But Uphill Fight
And, while his fightback against method detractors could be commendable, a short publicity tour might not be enough to alter perceptions, not to mention their practices. Maybe if he wants to make audiences recall the true essence of the Method, or to demonstrate what it can achieve, then Day-Lewis’s best bet is to just begin producing more films. Certainly we could all support that idea.
