It’s been a long while since anyone caught a glimpse of Daniel Day-Lewis. After he statement in 2017 that he would cease to work as an actor, prior to the release of Phantom Thread, Day-Lewis withdrew from the spotlight. However, during his hiatus, his legend has only grown.
The Legend of His Acting Method
Largely, this legend revolves around his favored approach to roles. Being an actor known for disappears into the roles he plays – for instance, during the Lincoln biopic, he had the director call him “Mr President” throughout the shoot – audiences has become increasingly obsessed with his process. Is it true he really send messages to co-star Sally Field in character as Lincoln? Was it accurate that he only eat game he hunted during Last of the Mohicans? Did he demand receiving food via spoon for My Left Foot?
Extreme acting methods: have we fallen out of love with over-the-top performances?
Now, Daniel Day-Lewis is back to public attention, with some hesitation, promoting his latest movie Anemone. And he is using this to vocalise his frustration at how method acting is viewed. “I’m a little cross nowadays when I hear various individuals talking carelessly and saying things like ‘fully embraced the Method’, which seems suggests that someone is acting insane in a drastic way,” he stated to a major publication. “People often concentrate 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 mental instability. However, in the career of an actor, it has to principally be about the internal work.”
An Industry Full of Followers
Frankly, this sounds as if the actor has come out from seclusion only to discover aghast at the world that has developed mirroring his methods. If you’re widely considered one of the greatest actors in history, and your process involves striking a prop until you break your nose (for Gangs of New York) or enduring two days in isolation without food or water (during In the Name of the Father), then it stands to reason that fellow performers will attempt to fill that vacuum by trying to mimic your hero.
In other words, we exist in a landscape full of imperfect imitators of Day-Lewis who strive only to show the world the extensive degree of dedication they put into their roles. On the milder side of the pool we have people like Lady Gaga, who was so desperate to win an Oscar for House of Gucci that she spent the whole campaign trying to convince everyone that she became an Italian native for a year and a half in preparation.
Then we have Jared Leto, who decided to immerse himself into the role as the Joker (for Suicide Squad) by sending “horrifying” gifts to his castmates. These items, depending on who you ask, included dead pigs and rats to anal beads and used condoms, although Leto denied those worst excesses. Then, of course, we have Jim Carrey, who went so deep as Andy Kaufman during Man on the Moon that they literally managed to get a full-length documentary from behind-the-scenes footage of him causing difficulties as impossible as he could for his colleagues.
The Modern Followers of the Method
The main 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 formed the subject of a critical magazine feature, including statements from individuals who were either concerned about his conduct (“The toll to himself concerns me,” remarked co-star Brian Cox) or extremely irritated by his actions (“I remember [him] making others to react with exasperation,” stated an unnamed co-star).
The actor says he ‘never intended to retire, truly’
There are numerous additional cases. Andrew Garfield went celibate for six months while preparing for Silence. Leonardo DiCaprio slept in an animal carcass during The Revenant. There’s a fighting chance that actor Austin Butler still speaks in the style of Elvis, years following that film came out. All of this, in part, is meant to invoke the seriousness in which Day-Lewis takes his craft.
A Noble Yet Challenging Fight
And, although his rebuttal against method detractors might be noble, a brief promotional cycle might not be enough to alter perceptions, let alone their behaviour. Maybe if he wants to remind people what method acting is, or to show them what it can achieve, then the optimal strategy for Day-Lewis is to simply begin producing additional movies. Certainly everyone would get behind that.
