It’s been a long while since the public caught a glimpse of Daniel Day-Lewis. Following his statement in 2017 that he would cease to work as an actor, prior to the debut of The Phantom Thread, the actor withdrew from the spotlight. Yet, during his hiatus, his reputation has only grown.
The Mythos Surrounding His Acting Method
Primarily, this legend centers on his favored approach to roles. Being an actor who famously immerses himself in the roles he plays – for example, during the Lincoln biopic, he had Steven Spielberg address him as “Mr. President” for the entire production – the world has grown more fascinated with his process. Did he really send texts to Sally Field as Abraham Lincoln? Was it accurate that he only eat animals he’d killed for Last of the Mohicans? Did he insist on receiving food via spoon while filming My Left Foot?
Extreme acting methods: have we fallen out of love with actorly excess?
Currently, Day-Lewis has returned in the limelight, somewhat reluctantly, promoting his latest movie Anemone. And he is using this to express his anger at how method acting is viewed. “I’m a little cross nowadays to hear various individuals gobbling off and saying things like ‘fully embraced the Method’, which seems suggests that someone is acting insane in an extreme fashion,” he stated to the New York Times. “People often concentrate on superficial aspects of acting, 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 internal work.”
A World Full of Followers
To be honest, this sounds like the actor has emerged from seclusion and found himself aghast at the acting community that has been created mirroring his methods. When you are widely considered one of the greatest performers to ever work, and your process involves headbutting a dummy until you break your nose (in Gangs of New York) or spending 48 hours in solitary confinement without food or water (during In the Name of the Father), it’s natural that fellow performers will want to fill that vacuum by trying to mimic your hero.
In other words, we now live in a landscape full of imperfect imitators of Day-Lewis who want nothing more than to demonstrate the extensive degree of dedication they put into their roles. On the milder side of the pool there are performers such as Lady Gaga, who was so desperate to earn an Academy Award for House of Gucci that she spent the whole campaign trying to convince everyone that she transformed into functionally Italian for a year and a half in preparation.
Then we have Jared Leto, who decided to deeply embed himself in the character of the Joker (in Suicide Squad) through sending “horrifying” gifts to his castmates. These, according to various accounts, included dead pigs and rats to intimate objects and used condoms, though Leto denied those worst excesses. Then, naturally, we have Jim Carrey, who went so deep as Andy Kaufman during Man on the Moon that filmmakers succeeded in creating a feature-length documentary out of B-roll of him making life to the utmost for his colleagues.
Contemporary Followers of the Method
The foremost Method Guy at the moment seems to be Jeremy Strong (once Day-Lewis’s assistant), whose process during Succession was so rigorously detailed that it became the subject of a derisive New Yorker profile, including statements from people who were either concerned for his behaviour (“The toll on himself concerns me,” remarked Brian Cox) or annoyed beyond all measure by it (“I recall him causing others to react with exasperation,” stated an unnamed co-star).
The actor says he ‘never intended to retire, truly’
There are numerous additional cases. Andrew Garfield went celibate over half a year while preparing for Silence. Leonardo DiCaprio rested inside a dead animal for The Revenant. There’s a fighting chance that Austin Butler continues to talk in the style of Elvis, three years after the movie’s release. Each of these instances, to some extent, aims to evoke the dedication in which Day-Lewis approaches his work.
A Noble But Uphill Fight
And, although his rebuttal to critics of the Method might be noble, a brief promotional cycle might not be enough to alter perceptions, not to mention their behaviour. Perhaps if he wishes to make audiences recall what method acting is, or to demonstrate what it can achieve, then Day-Lewis’s best bet is to just start making more films. Certainly we could all get behind that.
