It’s been a long while since the public caught a glimpse of Daniel Day-Lewis. After he statement in 2017 declaring he would cease to work as an actor, prior to the release of Phantom Thread, Day-Lewis quietly faded from view. Yet, during his hiatus, his legend expanded further.
The Legend Surrounding His Acting Method
Primarily, this legend revolves around his preferred style of working. Being an actor known for disappears into his characters – for example, while filming the Lincoln biopic, he had Steven Spielberg address him as “Mr President” for the entire production – audiences has grown increasingly obsessed with his process. Did he really send messages to co-star Sally Field in character as Lincoln? Was it accurate that he consumed solely animals he’d killed during Last of the Mohicans? Did he demand receiving food via spoon for My Left Foot?
Madness in their method: have we fallen out of love with actorly excess?
Now, Daniel Day-Lewis has returned to public attention, with some hesitation, promoting his latest movie Anemone. He is using this to express his frustration at how method acting is viewed. “I’m a little cross these days when I hear various individuals talking carelessly and saying things like ‘fully embraced the Method’, which seems suggests that a person’s behaving like a lunatic in an extreme fashion,” he stated to the New York Times. “Everyone often concentrate on the less important details of the work, and these elements typically include some form of self-punishment or an experience that imposes upon oneself extreme unease or mental instability. However, in the career of an actor, it has to mainly focus on the internal work.”
An Industry of Imitators
To be honest, it appears like Day-Lewis has emerged from his retreat and found himself aghast at the world that has been created mirroring his methods. When you are widely considered among the best actors to ever work, and your process involves striking a prop until you break your nose (for 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 emulate that example by trying to mimic your hero.
Essentially, we now live in an environment populated by half-cocked Day-Lewis impersonators who want nothing more than to show the world the sheer amount of effort they put into a character. At the shallow end of the pool there are performers such as Lady Gaga, who was so desperate to win an Oscar with House of Gucci that she spent the entire promotion attempting to persuade people that she became an Italian native for a year and a half in preparation.
Additionally, there is Jared Leto, who decided to deeply embed himself into the role as the Joker (in Suicide Squad) by sending “horrifying” gifts to fellow cast members. These, depending on who you ask, included deceased animals to intimate objects and used condoms, although the actor refuted the most extreme claims. Then, naturally, there is Jim Carrey, who went so deep into Andy Kaufman during Man on the Moon that they literally managed in creating a full-length documentary out of B-roll of him making life to the utmost for everyone around him.
Contemporary Method Practitioners
The foremost practitioner of the Method at the moment would appear to be Jeremy Strong (once an assistant to Day-Lewis), whose process while filming Succession was so laboriously intensive that it became the basis of a derisive magazine feature, full of quotes from people who were worried for his behaviour (“The toll on himself concerns me,” said Brian Cox) or extremely irritated by it (“I remember him causing everyone else roll their eyes,” said an anonymous cast member).
Daniel Day-Lewis says he ‘did not plan to stop acting, truly’
We have numerous additional cases. Andrew Garfield abstained from sex for six months for Silence. Leonardo DiCaprio slept in a dead animal during The Revenant. It’s quite possible that actor Austin Butler continues to talk like Elvis Presley, three years after that film came out. All of this, in part, aims to evoke the dedication in which Day-Lewis takes his work.
A Noble Yet Challenging Battle
Moreover, while his fightback to critics of the Method might be noble, a short publicity tour might not be enough to change anyone’s mind, let alone their behaviour. Perhaps if he wants to make audiences recall 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. Certainly we could all support that idea.
