It has been quite some time since the public saw or heard from the acclaimed actor Daniel Day-Lewis. After he announcement in 2017 declaring he would cease to work as an actor, prior to the debut of The Phantom Thread, the actor withdrew from the spotlight. However, during his hiatus, his reputation has only grown.
The Mythos of His Method
Largely, this reputation centers on his preferred approach to roles. As someone known for immerses himself in his characters – for instance, while filming the Lincoln biopic, he had the director call him “Mr President” for the entire production – audiences has become more fascinated with how he works. Did he actually sent messages to co-star Sally Field in character as Lincoln? Was it accurate that he consumed solely animals he’d killed during Last of the Mohicans? Did he insist on being spoon-fed for My Left Foot?
Extreme acting methods: have we lost interest with over-the-top performances?
Currently, Daniel Day-Lewis is back to public attention, with some hesitation, for his new film Anemone. And he is taking this chance to express his anger regarding how the Method technique is viewed. “I’m a little cross these days when I hear all kinds of people talking carelessly and using phrases like ‘fully embraced the Method’, which seems suggests that someone is acting insane in a drastic way,” he told the New York Times. “People tends to focus on superficial details of the work, and those details always seem to involve some form of self-punishment or a situation that causes extreme unease or mental instability. But of course, in the life of an actor, it must mainly focus on the internal work.”
A World of Imitators
Frankly, it appears as if Day-Lewis has come out from seclusion only to discover aghast at the acting community that has developed mirroring his methods. When you are widely considered one of the greatest actors to ever work, and your process includes striking a prop until you break your nose (for Gangs of New York) or spending 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 imitating your hero.
In other words, we now live in a landscape full of half-cocked Day-Lewis impersonators who strive only to demonstrate the sheer amount of effort 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 with House of Gucci that she dedicated the whole campaign trying to convince everyone that she became an Italian native for a year and a half as preparation.
Additionally, there is Jared Leto, who chose to deeply embed himself in the character of 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 anal beads and used condoms, although the actor refuted the most extreme claims. And then, naturally, there is Jim Carrey, who went so deep as Andy Kaufman during Man on the Moon that they 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.
The Modern Followers of the Method
The main Method Guy at the moment would appear to be Jeremy Strong (once an assistant to Day-Lewis), whose process while filming Succession was so rigorously detailed that it formed the subject of a critical New Yorker profile, full of quotes from people who were either concerned for his behaviour (“It’s the cost to himself that worries me,” remarked Brian Cox) or extremely irritated by it (“I recall him causing others to react with exasperation,” said an unnamed co-star).
Daniel Day-Lewis claims he ‘never intended to stop acting, truly’
There are numerous additional cases. Andrew Garfield went celibate for six months for Silence. Leonardo DiCaprio slept in a dead animal for The Revenant. It’s quite possible that actor Austin Butler still speaks in the style of Elvis, years following the movie’s release. Each of these instances, to some extent, aims to evoke the seriousness with which Day-Lewis takes his craft.
An Admirable But Uphill Fight
Moreover, although his rebuttal against method detractors might be noble, a short publicity tour may prove insufficient to alter perceptions, not to mention their practices. Maybe if he wants to make audiences recall what method acting is, or to demonstrate its potential results, then Day-Lewis’s best bet is to simply begin producing more films. Certainly we could all support that idea.
