It has been a long while since anyone saw or heard from Daniel Day-Lewis. Following his announcement in 2017 declaring he would cease to pursue acting, just before the release of The Phantom Thread, Day-Lewis withdrew from the spotlight. Yet, in his absence, his reputation has only grown.
The Mythos of His Method
Largely, this legend centers on his preferred approach to roles. Being an actor known for disappears into the roles he plays – for example, during the Lincoln biopic, reportedly asked Steven Spielberg address him as “Mr. President” throughout the shoot – audiences has grown increasingly obsessed with his process. Did he really send messages to co-star Sally Field as Abraham Lincoln? Did he only eat animals he’d killed during Last of the Mohicans? Did he demand being spoon-fed while filming My Left Foot?
Extreme acting methods: have we fallen out of love with over-the-top performances?
Now, Daniel Day-Lewis has returned 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’m a little cross nowadays to hear various individuals talking carelessly and saying things like ‘fully embraced the Method’, which seems is meant to imply that a person’s behaving like a lunatic in an extreme fashion,” he told the New York Times. “Everyone often concentrate on the less important details of the work, and these elements always seem to involve some sort of self-punishment or a situation that imposes upon oneself extreme unease or psychological strain. However, in the life for a performer, it must mainly focus on the internal work.”
A World of Imitators
Frankly, this sounds like the actor has emerged from his retreat only to discover shocked by the acting community that has developed mirroring his methods. If you’re regarded as among the best actors in history, and your process includes striking a prop to the point of injury (for Gangs of New York) or enduring 48 hours in isolation deprived of sustenance (during In the Name of the Father), it’s natural that other actors will attempt to emulate that example by trying to mimic their idol.
Essentially, we now live in an environment full of half-cocked imitators of Day-Lewis who strive only to demonstrate the extensive degree of effort they invest in their roles. At the shallow end of the pool we have people like Lady Gaga, who was so desperate to earn an Academy Award with House of Gucci that she spent the whole campaign attempting to persuade people that she became functionally Italian for a year and a half as preparation.
Then we have Jared Leto, who decided to immerse himself in the character of the Joker (in Suicide Squad) by sending “disturbing” presents to his castmates. These, depending on who you ask, included dead pigs and rats to intimate objects and used condoms, although Leto denied those worst excesses. And then, naturally, we have Jim Carrey, who went so deep into Andy Kaufman for Man on the Moon that they 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 foremost practitioner of the Method currently seems to be Jeremy Strong (once Day-Lewis’s assistant), whose approach while filming Succession was so rigorously detailed that it became the subject of a derisive magazine feature, full of quotes from individuals who were either concerned about his conduct (“It’s the cost to himself that worries me,” said co-star Brian Cox) or annoyed beyond all measure by it (“I remember him causing everyone else to react with exasperation,” said an unnamed co-star).
The actor says he ‘never intended to retire, really’
There are numerous additional cases. Andrew Garfield went celibate over half a year for Silence. Leonardo DiCaprio slept in a dead animal during The Revenant. It’s quite possible that actor Austin Butler still speaks like Elvis Presley, three years after the movie’s release. Each of these instances, in part, aims to evoke the dedication with which Day-Lewis takes his work.
An Admirable Yet Challenging Battle
And, although his rebuttal to critics of the Method might be noble, a short publicity tour might not be enough to change anyone’s mind, not to mention their behaviour. Maybe if he wants to make audiences recall the true essence of the Method, or to show them its potential results, then Day-Lewis’s best bet is to just begin producing more films. Certainly we could all support that idea.
