It’s been a long while since anyone saw or heard from the acclaimed actor Daniel Day-Lewis. Following his statement in 2017 that he would no longer pursue acting, just before the debut of Phantom Thread, the actor withdrew from the spotlight. Yet, in his absence, his reputation has only grown.
The Legend Surrounding His Acting Method
Largely, this reputation centers on his preferred approach to roles. Being an actor known for disappears into his characters – for example, while filming the Lincoln biopic, he had Steven Spielberg call him “Mr. President” throughout the shoot – the world has grown increasingly obsessed with his process. Is it true he actually sent texts to Sally Field as Abraham Lincoln? Did he only eat animals he’d killed for The Last of the Mohicans? And did he demand being spoon-fed while filming My Left Foot?
Madness in their method: has the public fallen out of love with actorly excess?
Now, Day-Lewis is back to public attention, somewhat reluctantly, promoting his latest movie Anemone. And he is using this to vocalise his frustration at how method acting is viewed. “I am somewhat annoyed nowadays to hear various individuals gobbling off and saying things like ‘gone full method’, which seems is meant to imply that a person’s acting insane in a drastic way,” he told the New York Times. “People tends to focus on superficial details of the work, and these elements always seem to involve some form of self-flagellation or a situation that causes a severe discomfort or psychological strain. However, in the career of an actor, it has to principally be about the inner transformation.”
An Industry Full of Followers
To be honest, this sounds like the actor has come out from seclusion and found himself aghast at the world that has developed in his image. If you’re regarded as among the best actors to ever work, and your approach includes striking a prop to the point of injury (in Gangs of New York) or spending 48 hours 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 imitating your hero.
In other words, we exist in a landscape populated by imperfect imitators of Day-Lewis who want nothing more than to demonstrate the sheer amount of effort they put into their roles. At the shallow end of the pool there are performers such as Lady Gaga, who was determined to earn an Academy Award with House of Gucci that she dedicated 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 immerse himself into the role of the Joker (in Suicide Squad) by sending “horrifying” gifts to fellow cast members. These, depending on who you ask, included dead pigs and rats to anal beads and used condoms, though Leto denied the most extreme claims. Then, naturally, there is Jim Carrey, who immersed himself so fully into Andy Kaufman during Man on the Moon that filmmakers literally managed to get a full-length documentary from behind-the-scenes footage of him making life to the utmost for everyone around him.
Contemporary Method Practitioners
The foremost practitioner of the Method currently seems to be Jeremy Strong (formerly Day-Lewis’s assistant), whose process while filming Succession was so laboriously intensive that it became the basis of a derisive New Yorker profile, including statements from people who were worried for his behaviour (“The toll on himself that worries me,” said co-star Brian Cox) or annoyed beyond all measure by it (“I recall him causing everyone else roll their eyes,” said an anonymous cast member).
The actor says he ‘did not plan to stop acting, really’
We have so many other examples. Andrew Garfield abstained from sex for six months while preparing for Silence. Leonardo DiCaprio rested inside a dead animal during The Revenant. There’s a fighting chance that actor Austin Butler continues to talk like Elvis Presley, three years after that film came out. Each of these instances, to some extent, aims to evoke the dedication in which Day-Lewis takes his craft.
An Admirable But Uphill Battle
Moreover, while his fightback to critics of the Method might be noble, a short publicity tour may prove insufficient to alter perceptions, not to mention their practices. Perhaps if he wants to make audiences recall what method acting is, or to show them its potential results, then the optimal strategy for Day-Lewis is to just start making more films. Surely we could all support that idea.
