It has been a long while since the public saw or heard from the acclaimed actor Daniel Day-Lewis. After he statement in 2017 that he would cease to pursue acting, just before the release of Phantom Thread, the actor quietly faded from view. However, during his hiatus, his legend has only grown.
The Mythos of His Acting Method
Primarily, this reputation centers on his preferred approach to roles. As someone known for immerses himself in the roles he plays – for instance, while filming the Lincoln biopic, he had the director call him “Mr. President” for the entire production – the world has grown increasingly obsessed with how he works. Is it true he really send messages to co-star Sally Field in character as Lincoln? Did he consumed solely game he hunted for The Last of the Mohicans? Did he demand being spoon-fed for My Left Foot?
Extreme acting methods: has the public lost interest with actorly excess?
Currently, Daniel Day-Lewis is back in the limelight, with some hesitation, promoting his latest movie Anemone. And 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 gobbling off and using phrases like ‘gone full method’, which I think is meant to imply that a person’s acting insane in a drastic way,” he stated to the New York Times. “People often concentrate on superficial details of the work, and those details always seem to involve some form of self-punishment or an experience that imposes upon oneself extreme unease or mental instability. However, in the life of an actor, it has to mainly focus on the inner transformation.”
An Industry Full of Followers
To be honest, this sounds as if the actor has come out from his retreat and found himself aghast at the world that has been created in his image. If you’re regarded as among the best performers to ever work, and your process includes striking a prop until you break your nose (for Gangs of New York) or spending two days in solitary confinement deprived of sustenance (for In the Name of the Father), then it stands to reason that fellow performers will attempt to emulate that example by imitating their idol.
In other words, we now live in a landscape populated by imperfect Day-Lewis impersonators who strive only to demonstrate the sheer amount of dedication they invest in their roles. At the shallow end of the pool there are performers such as Lady Gaga, who was so desperate to win an Oscar for House of Gucci that she dedicated the whole campaign trying to convince everyone that she transformed into functionally Italian over 18 months in preparation.
Additionally, there is Jared Leto, who decided to immerse himself into the role as the Joker (in Suicide Squad) through sending “horrifying” presents to fellow cast members. These items, according to various accounts, included dead pigs and rats to intimate objects and personal hygiene products, though 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 succeeded in creating a feature-length documentary out of B-roll of him making life as impossible as he could for everyone around him.
Contemporary Followers of the Method
The foremost practitioner of the Method at the moment seems to be Jeremy Strong (formerly Day-Lewis’s assistant), whose process during Succession was so rigorously detailed that it became the basis of a derisive New Yorker profile, including statements from individuals who were either concerned about his conduct (“The toll on himself concerns me,” remarked co-star Brian Cox) or annoyed beyond all measure by his actions (“I remember [him] making everyone else roll their eyes,” stated an unnamed co-star).
Daniel Day-Lewis claims he ‘did not plan to stop acting, truly’
We have so many other examples. Andrew Garfield abstained from sex for six months for Silence. Leonardo DiCaprio rested inside a dead animal for The Revenant. It’s quite possible that actor Austin Butler still speaks in the style of Elvis, years following that film came out. All of this, to some extent, is meant to invoke the dedication in which Day-Lewis takes his work.
A Noble Yet Challenging Fight
Moreover, although his rebuttal to critics of the Method might be noble, a short publicity tour may prove insufficient to change anyone’s mind, not to mention their behaviour. Maybe if he wishes to make audiences recall what method acting is, or to show them what it can achieve, then Day-Lewis’s best bet is to simply start making more films. Certainly we could all support that idea.
