It has been a long while since anyone caught a glimpse of Daniel Day-Lewis. Following his statement in 2017 that he would cease to pursue acting, just before the debut of The Phantom Thread, Day-Lewis quietly faded from view. Yet, in his absence, his reputation expanded further.
The Mythos Surrounding His Acting Method
Largely, this legend revolves around his preferred approach to roles. As someone who famously disappears into the roles he plays – for example, during Lincoln, he had the director address him as “Mr. President” throughout the shoot – the world has grown increasingly obsessed with his process. Did he really send messages to co-star Sally Field as Abraham Lincoln? Was it accurate that he only eat animals he’d killed during The Last of the Mohicans? And did he insist on receiving food via spoon while filming My Left Foot?
Extreme acting methods: has the public fallen out of love with actorly excess?
Currently, Daniel Day-Lewis is back in the limelight, somewhat reluctantly, for his new film Anemone. And he is taking this chance to express his anger regarding how method acting is perceived. “I am somewhat annoyed these days to hear various individuals gobbling off and using phrases like ‘gone full method’, which I think is meant to imply that someone is behaving like a lunatic in an extreme fashion,” he told the New York Times. “Everyone often concentrate on superficial details of the work, and those details always seem to involve some form of self-flagellation or a situation that imposes upon oneself a severe discomfort or mental instability. However, in the career for a performer, it must mainly focus on the inner transformation.”
A World Full of Followers
Frankly, this sounds as if Day-Lewis has come out from his retreat only to discover shocked by the acting community that has developed mirroring his methods. When you are widely considered one of the greatest performers to ever work, and your approach involves striking a prop to the point of injury (for Gangs of New York) or enduring 48 hours in isolation deprived of sustenance (for 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 imperfect Day-Lewis impersonators who strive only to demonstrate the extensive degree of dedication they invest in their roles. At the shallow end of this trend there are performers such as Lady Gaga, who was so desperate to win an Oscar for House of Gucci that she spent the whole campaign attempting to persuade people that she became functionally Italian over 18 months in preparation.
Then we have Jared Leto, who decided to immerse himself in the character as the Joker (for Suicide Squad) by sending “disturbing” gifts to his castmates. These, depending on who you ask, range from deceased animals to intimate objects and used condoms, although the actor refuted those worst excesses. Then, naturally, we have Jim Carrey, who went so deep into Andy Kaufman for Man on the Moon that filmmakers literally managed in creating a feature-length documentary from behind-the-scenes footage of him causing difficulties as impossible as he could for his colleagues.
Contemporary Method Practitioners
The main Method Guy currently seems to be Jeremy Strong (formerly an assistant to Day-Lewis), whose process during Succession was so laboriously intensive that it formed the subject of a derisive New Yorker profile, full of quotes from people who were worried about his conduct (“It’s the cost on himself concerns me,” remarked Brian Cox) or annoyed beyond all measure by his actions (“I remember him causing others to react with exasperation,” said an unnamed co-star).
Daniel Day-Lewis says he ‘did not plan to retire, truly’
We have so many other examples. Andrew Garfield abstained from sex for six months for Silence. Leonardo DiCaprio slept in a dead animal during The Revenant. It’s quite possible that Austin Butler still speaks like Elvis Presley, years following the movie’s release. All of this, in part, aims to evoke the dedication in which Day-Lewis approaches his work.
A Noble But Uphill Fight
Moreover, although his rebuttal against method detractors could be commendable, a brief promotional cycle might not be enough to alter perceptions, let alone their behaviour. Perhaps if he wishes to make audiences recall what method acting is, or to demonstrate what it can achieve, then Day-Lewis’s best bet is to just start making additional movies. Surely we could all support that idea.
