It has been quite some time since the public caught a glimpse of the acclaimed actor Daniel Day-Lewis. After he statement in 2017 declaring he would cease to work as an actor, just before the release of The Phantom Thread, Day-Lewis quietly faded from view. Yet, during his hiatus, his reputation has only grown.
The Mythos Surrounding His Method
Largely, this reputation centers on his favored approach to roles. As someone known for disappears into the roles he plays – for example, during the Lincoln biopic, reportedly asked Steven Spielberg call him “Mr. President” throughout the shoot – audiences has grown increasingly obsessed with how he works. Did he actually sent messages to co-star Sally Field as Abraham Lincoln? Was it accurate that he consumed solely animals he’d killed during Last of the Mohicans? And did he insist on receiving food via spoon while filming My Left Foot?
Extreme acting methods: have we lost interest with over-the-top performances?
Now, Daniel Day-Lewis has returned in the limelight, somewhat reluctantly, for his new film Anemone. He is using this to vocalise his anger regarding how the Method technique is perceived. “I am somewhat annoyed nowadays to hear all kinds of people talking carelessly and saying things like ‘fully embraced the Method’, which seems suggests that a person’s behaving like a lunatic in a drastic way,” he told a major publication. “People tends to focus on the less important aspects of acting, and those details typically include some sort of self-flagellation or an experience that causes extreme unease or mental instability. But of course, in the life for a performer, it has to principally be about the inner transformation.”
A World Full of Followers
To be honest, it appears as if the actor has emerged from seclusion and found himself aghast at the acting community that has been created in his image. When you are widely considered among the best actors to ever work, and your process includes striking a prop to the point of injury (in Gangs of New York) or enduring two days in solitary confinement deprived of sustenance (for In the Name of the Father), then it stands to reason that other actors will want to emulate that example by trying to mimic their idol.
In other words, we exist in an environment populated by half-cocked Day-Lewis impersonators who want nothing more than to demonstrate the extensive degree of dedication they put into their roles. 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 transformed into 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” presents to fellow cast members. These, depending on who you ask, included dead pigs and rats to intimate objects and personal hygiene products, although Leto denied those worst excesses. And then, naturally, we have Jim Carrey, who immersed himself so fully into Andy Kaufman during Man on the Moon that they succeeded to get a full-length documentary out of B-roll of him causing difficulties as impossible as he could for everyone around him.
Contemporary Followers of the Method
The main Method Guy currently would appear to be Jeremy Strong (formerly an assistant to Day-Lewis), whose approach during Succession was so rigorously detailed that it formed the basis of a critical New Yorker profile, including statements from people who were worried 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] making everyone else to react with exasperation,” stated an anonymous cast member).
The actor says he ‘did not plan to stop acting, really’
There are so many other examples. Andrew Garfield went celibate for six months for Silence. Leonardo DiCaprio rested inside an animal carcass during The Revenant. It’s quite possible that Austin Butler continues to talk in the style of Elvis, three years after that film came out. All of this, in part, aims to evoke the seriousness in which Day-Lewis takes his work.
A Noble But Uphill Fight
Moreover, although his rebuttal against method detractors might be noble, a short publicity tour may prove insufficient to change anyone’s mind, not to mention their behaviour. Perhaps if he wishes 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 start making additional movies. Surely we could all support that idea.
