It’s been a long while since the public saw or heard from Daniel Day-Lewis. After he statement in 2017 declaring he would cease to pursue acting, prior to the debut of Phantom Thread, the actor withdrew from the spotlight. However, during his hiatus, his reputation expanded further.
The Mythos of His Method
Largely, this reputation centers on his favored approach to roles. As someone who famously disappears into his characters – for instance, 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 in character as Lincoln? Did he only eat animals he’d killed during Last of the Mohicans? Did he demand receiving food via spoon while filming My Left Foot?
Madness in their method: have we fallen out of love with actorly excess?
Currently, Day-Lewis is back in the limelight, with some hesitation, for his new film Anemone. He is using this to express his frustration regarding how method acting is perceived. “I am somewhat annoyed these days when I hear various individuals talking carelessly and saying things like ‘fully embraced the Method’, which seems is meant to imply that someone is behaving like a lunatic in a drastic way,” he stated to the New York Times. “Everyone tends to focus 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. But of course, in the career for a performer, it has to mainly focus on the internal work.”
An Industry Full of Followers
To be honest, this sounds as if Day-Lewis has come out from his retreat only to discover shocked by the world that has developed mirroring his methods. When you are widely considered one of the greatest actors in history, and your process includes striking a prop until you break your nose (for Gangs of New York) or spending 48 hours in isolation 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 your hero.
In other words, we now live in a landscape full of half-cocked Day-Lewis impersonators who want nothing more than to show the world the sheer amount of effort they put into a character. On the milder side 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 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) through sending “horrifying” gifts to his castmates. These items, according to various accounts, range from dead pigs and rats to anal beads and personal hygiene products, although the actor refuted those worst excesses. Then, naturally, there is Jim Carrey, who went so deep into Andy Kaufman during Man on the Moon that filmmakers succeeded in creating a feature-length documentary out of B-roll of him causing difficulties as impossible as he could for his colleagues.
The Modern Followers of the Method
The foremost practitioner of the Method at the moment would appear to be Jeremy Strong (once Day-Lewis’s assistant), whose approach while filming Succession was so rigorously detailed that it became the basis of a critical New Yorker profile, full of quotes from individuals who were either concerned about his conduct (“The toll on himself concerns me,” said co-star Brian Cox) or annoyed beyond all measure by it (“I recall him causing everyone else to react with exasperation,” stated an unnamed co-star).
Daniel Day-Lewis claims he ‘did not plan to retire, truly’
There are numerous additional cases. Andrew Garfield abstained from sex over half a year while preparing for Silence. Leonardo DiCaprio slept in an animal carcass for The Revenant. It’s quite possible that actor Austin Butler continues to talk like Elvis Presley, three years after the movie’s release. Each of these instances, to some extent, is meant to invoke the dedication with which Day-Lewis approaches his craft.
An Admirable But Uphill Fight
Moreover, while his fightback to critics of the Method could be commendable, a short publicity tour may prove insufficient to change anyone’s mind, let alone their practices. Perhaps if he wishes to make audiences recall what method acting is, or to demonstrate its potential results, then Day-Lewis’s best bet is to just begin producing additional movies. Surely everyone would support that idea.
