It has been a long while since the public caught a glimpse of the acclaimed actor Daniel Day-Lewis. After he announcement in 2017 that he would no longer work as an actor, just before the release of The Phantom Thread, Day-Lewis quietly faded from view. However, during his hiatus, his reputation has only grown.
The Mythos Surrounding His Method
Largely, this reputation centers on his preferred approach to roles. Being an actor known for disappears into his characters – for example, while filming the Lincoln biopic, he had the director address him as “Mr President” for the entire production – the world has grown increasingly obsessed with how he works. Is it true he actually sent messages to co-star Sally Field in character as Lincoln? Did he consumed solely animals he’d killed for The Last of the Mohicans? Did he demand receiving food via spoon for My Left Foot?
Madness in their method: has the public fallen out of love with actorly excess?
Currently, Day-Lewis has returned in the limelight, somewhat reluctantly, for his new film Anemone. And he is taking this chance to vocalise his anger regarding how method acting is perceived. “I’m a little cross these days when I hear various individuals talking carelessly and saying things like ‘gone full method’, which I think suggests that a person’s behaving like a lunatic in an extreme fashion,” he told the New York Times. “People tends to focus on the less important details of the work, and those details typically include some sort of self-flagellation or a situation that imposes upon oneself extreme unease or psychological strain. However, in the life for a performer, it must principally be about the inner transformation.”
An Industry Full of Followers
To be honest, this sounds as if Day-Lewis has emerged from his retreat only to discover aghast at the acting community that has developed mirroring his methods. When you are regarded as among the best actors to ever work, and your approach includes striking a prop to the point of injury (in Gangs of New York) or enduring two days in isolation without food or water (during In the Name of the Father), it’s natural that other actors will attempt to emulate that example by imitating your hero.
Essentially, we now live in an environment populated by imperfect imitators of Day-Lewis who strive only to demonstrate the extensive degree of effort they invest in a character. At the shallow end of this trend there are performers such as Lady Gaga, who was determined to earn an Academy Award for House of Gucci that she spent the whole campaign trying to convince everyone that she became functionally Italian for a year and a half as preparation.
Additionally, there is Jared Leto, who chose to deeply embed himself into the role as the Joker (for Suicide Squad) by sending “horrifying” gifts to his castmates. These items, according to various accounts, included dead pigs and rats to intimate objects and used condoms, though Leto denied those worst excesses. And then, naturally, there is Jim Carrey, who immersed himself so fully into Andy Kaufman during Man on the Moon that they succeeded to get a feature-length documentary from behind-the-scenes footage of him causing difficulties as impossible as he could for everyone around him.
The Modern Followers of the Method
The foremost practitioner of the Method at the moment seems to be Jeremy Strong (formerly an assistant to Day-Lewis), whose process during Succession was so rigorously detailed that it formed the basis of a derisive New Yorker profile, including statements from individuals who were worried for his behaviour (“It’s the cost to himself concerns me,” remarked Brian Cox) or extremely irritated by it (“I remember [him] making everyone else roll their eyes,” said an anonymous cast member).
The actor claims he ‘did not plan to stop acting, truly’
We have numerous additional cases. Andrew Garfield abstained from sex over half a year for Silence. Leonardo DiCaprio slept in a dead animal during The Revenant. There’s a fighting chance that Austin Butler still speaks like Elvis Presley, years following the movie’s release. All of this, in part, is meant to invoke the dedication in which Day-Lewis approaches his work.
An Admirable But Uphill Battle
And, while his fightback to critics of the Method could be commendable, a brief promotional cycle might not be enough to change anyone’s mind, not to mention their practices. Perhaps if he wishes to remind people the true essence of the Method, or to show them its potential results, then the optimal strategy for Day-Lewis is to simply start making more films. Certainly we could all get behind that.
