It’s been quite some time since anyone saw or heard from the acclaimed actor Daniel Day-Lewis. After he statement in 2017 that he would cease to work as an actor, prior to the debut of Phantom Thread, the actor quietly faded from view. However, in his absence, his reputation expanded further.
The Legend Surrounding His Acting Method
Primarily, this reputation revolves around his favored approach to roles. As someone who famously disappears into his characters – for instance, during the Lincoln biopic, he had the director call him “Mr President” for the entire production – the world has grown more fascinated with how he works. Is it true he actually sent messages to co-star Sally Field as Abraham Lincoln? Was it accurate that he consumed solely animals he’d killed for The Last of the Mohicans? And did he demand being spoon-fed for My Left Foot?
Madness in their method: have we fallen out of love with actorly excess?
Currently, Daniel Day-Lewis is back in the limelight, 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 am somewhat annoyed these days to hear various individuals gobbling off and saying things like ‘gone full method’, which seems is meant to imply that someone is behaving like a lunatic in an extreme fashion,” he stated to the New York Times. “Everyone tends to focus on superficial aspects of acting, and those details typically include some form of self-punishment or an experience that causes a severe discomfort or psychological strain. However, in the career of an actor, it has to principally be about the internal work.”
A World of Imitators
Frankly, it appears like the actor has come out from seclusion and found himself shocked by the world that has been created mirroring his methods. If you’re regarded as one of the greatest actors 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 solitary confinement 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 an environment populated by half-cocked Day-Lewis impersonators who strive only to show the world the sheer amount of dedication they put into a character. At the shallow end of this trend there are performers such as Lady Gaga, who was so desperate to earn an Academy Award with House of Gucci that she spent the entire promotion 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 as the Joker (for Suicide Squad) through sending “disturbing” gifts to fellow cast members. These, according to various accounts, included dead pigs and rats to intimate objects and personal hygiene products, although the actor refuted the most extreme claims. Then, naturally, we have Jim Carrey, who immersed himself so fully as Andy Kaufman during Man on the Moon that filmmakers literally managed to get a feature-length documentary from behind-the-scenes footage of him making life to the utmost for his colleagues.
The Modern Followers of the Method
The main practitioner of the Method currently would appear to be Jeremy Strong (formerly Day-Lewis’s assistant), whose approach while filming Succession was so laboriously intensive that it formed the subject of a critical New Yorker profile, including statements from people who were either concerned for his behaviour (“The toll on himself concerns me,” said co-star Brian Cox) or extremely irritated by it (“I recall him causing others to react with exasperation,” said an unnamed co-star).
Daniel Day-Lewis says he ‘did not plan to stop acting, truly’
There are numerous additional cases. Andrew Garfield abstained from sex for six months for Silence. Leonardo DiCaprio rested inside an animal carcass for The Revenant. There’s a fighting chance that actor Austin Butler still speaks like Elvis Presley, three years after the movie’s release. All of this, in part, aims to evoke the seriousness with which Day-Lewis approaches his work.
An Admirable But Uphill Fight
And, while his fightback to critics of the Method might be noble, a brief promotional cycle may prove insufficient to alter perceptions, let alone their behaviour. Perhaps if he wants to remind people what method acting is, or to show them what it can achieve, then Day-Lewis’s best bet is to simply begin producing additional movies. Certainly we could all get behind that.
