It has been a long while since anyone saw or heard from Daniel Day-Lewis. After he announcement in 2017 declaring he would no longer pursue acting, prior to the release of Phantom Thread, Day-Lewis quietly faded from view. Yet, in his absence, his legend expanded further.
The Mythos of His Method
Largely, this reputation centers on his favored style of working. As someone known for disappears into his characters – for example, while filming Lincoln, he had the director address him as “Mr. President” for the entire production – audiences has become more fascinated with his process. Did he really send messages to co-star Sally Field as Abraham Lincoln? Did he consumed solely animals he’d killed during The Last of the Mohicans? And did he demand receiving food via spoon while filming My Left Foot?
Madness in their method: have we lost interest with actorly excess?
Now, Daniel Day-Lewis is back in the limelight, somewhat reluctantly, promoting his latest movie Anemone. He is using this to express his frustration regarding how method acting is viewed. “I’m a little cross nowadays when I hear all kinds of people gobbling off and using phrases like ‘gone full method’, which seems is meant to imply that a person’s acting insane in a drastic way,” he told a major publication. “People often concentrate on the less important aspects of acting, and these elements always seem to involve some form of self-punishment or a situation that causes a severe discomfort or psychological strain. However, in the life for a performer, it must principally be about the internal work.”
An Industry Full of Followers
To be honest, this sounds as if Day-Lewis has emerged from his retreat and found himself shocked by the acting community that has developed in his image. When you are widely considered among the best actors to ever work, and your process includes striking a prop until you break your nose (in 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 want to emulate that example by trying to mimic your hero.
Essentially, we exist in a landscape populated by half-cocked imitators of Day-Lewis who want nothing more than to demonstrate the sheer amount of dedication they invest in their roles. At the shallow end of the pool we have people like Lady Gaga, who was determined to earn an Academy Award with 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 as preparation.
Then we have Jared Leto, who decided to immerse himself into the role of the Joker (for Suicide Squad) by sending “horrifying” presents to fellow cast members. These items, according to various accounts, range from dead pigs and rats to anal beads and used condoms, although the actor refuted those worst excesses. And then, of course, there is Jim Carrey, who immersed himself so fully as Andy Kaufman during Man on the Moon that filmmakers succeeded to get a full-length documentary out of B-roll of him making life as impossible as he could for his colleagues.
Contemporary Followers of the Method
The main Method Guy at the moment would appear to be Jeremy Strong (formerly an assistant to Day-Lewis), whose approach during Succession was so rigorously detailed that it became the subject of a critical New Yorker profile, including statements from individuals who were either concerned for his behaviour (“It’s the cost to himself that worries me,” said co-star Brian Cox) or extremely irritated by it (“I recall [him] making others roll their eyes,” said an unnamed co-star).
Daniel Day-Lewis says he ‘did not plan to stop acting, truly’
There are so many other examples. 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 actor Austin Butler continues to talk like Elvis Presley, three years after the movie’s release. Each of these instances, in part, aims to evoke the dedication with which Day-Lewis approaches his work.
An Admirable But Uphill Fight
Moreover, although his rebuttal to critics of the Method could be commendable, a brief promotional cycle might not be enough to change anyone’s mind, let alone their practices. Maybe if he wants to remind people the true essence of the Method, or to show them its potential results, then Day-Lewis’s best bet is to just start making more films. Surely we could all get behind that.
