It’s been a long while since the public saw or heard from the acclaimed actor Daniel Day-Lewis. Following his announcement in 2017 that he would no longer work as an actor, just before the debut of Phantom Thread, Day-Lewis quietly faded from view. Yet, in his absence, his legend has only grown.
The Legend of His Method
Primarily, this reputation revolves around his preferred approach to roles. Being an actor known for immerses himself in his characters – for example, while filming the Lincoln biopic, he had the director address him as “Mr President” for the entire production – audiences has grown increasingly obsessed with his process. Did he actually sent messages to co-star Sally Field in character as Lincoln? Did he consumed solely game he hunted for Last of the Mohicans? Did he demand being spoon-fed for My Left Foot?
Madness in their method: has the public fallen out of love with actorly excess?
Currently, Day-Lewis is back to public attention, somewhat reluctantly, promoting his latest movie Anemone. And he is taking this chance to express his anger at how method acting is viewed. “I’m a little cross these days when I hear all kinds of people gobbling off and saying things like ‘gone full method’, which I think suggests that someone is behaving like a lunatic in a drastic way,” he stated to the New York Times. “People tends to focus on superficial aspects of acting, and those details typically include some form of self-punishment or a situation that imposes upon oneself extreme unease or mental instability. However, in the life of an actor, it has to mainly focus on the internal work.”
A World Full of Followers
Frankly, this sounds as if Day-Lewis has come out from seclusion and found himself aghast at the world that has been created in his image. If you’re regarded as one of the greatest actors in history, and your approach involves striking a prop until you break your nose (for Gangs of New York) or enduring 48 hours in isolation without food or water (for In the Name of the Father), it’s natural that other actors will attempt to emulate that example by imitating your hero.
In other words, we now live in a landscape populated by half-cocked Day-Lewis impersonators who strive only to demonstrate the extensive degree of effort 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 for House of Gucci that she spent the entire promotion attempting to persuade people that she became an Italian native over 18 months as preparation.
Then we have Jared Leto, who chose to immerse himself into the role as the Joker (in Suicide Squad) through sending “disturbing” presents to his castmates. These items, depending on who you ask, included deceased animals to intimate objects and used condoms, although Leto denied the most extreme claims. And then, naturally, there is Jim Carrey, who went so deep as Andy Kaufman during Man on the Moon that they succeeded in creating a feature-length documentary out of B-roll of him making life to the utmost for his colleagues.
Contemporary Method Practitioners
The foremost practitioner of the Method currently seems to be Jeremy Strong (formerly Day-Lewis’s assistant), whose process while filming Succession was so laboriously intensive that it formed the basis of a derisive New Yorker profile, full of quotes from individuals who were worried about his conduct (“The toll on himself concerns me,” said co-star Brian Cox) or annoyed beyond all measure by it (“I recall [him] making everyone else to react with exasperation,” stated an anonymous cast member).
The actor claims he ‘did not plan to retire, 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. It’s quite possible that Austin Butler still speaks in the style of Elvis, years following that film came out. All of this, in part, is meant to invoke the seriousness with which Day-Lewis approaches his work.
A Noble But Uphill Battle
And, while his fightback to critics of the Method might be noble, a short publicity tour might not be enough to alter perceptions, not to mention their practices. Perhaps if he wishes to make audiences recall the true essence of the Method, or to demonstrate its potential results, then Day-Lewis’s best bet is to simply start making more films. Surely we could all get behind that.
