It has been a long while since the public saw or heard from the acclaimed actor Daniel Day-Lewis. After he statement in 2017 declaring he would no longer pursue acting, just before the debut of The Phantom Thread, Day-Lewis withdrew from the spotlight. However, in his absence, his reputation expanded further.
The Legend Surrounding His Method
Primarily, this reputation centers on his preferred style of working. As someone who famously immerses himself in the roles he plays – for instance, while filming the Lincoln biopic, he had the director call him “Mr President” for the entire production – audiences has grown more fascinated with how he works. Did he really send messages to co-star Sally Field in character as Lincoln? Was it accurate that he only eat animals he’d killed for Last of the Mohicans? Did he demand receiving food via spoon while filming My Left Foot?
Extreme acting methods: have we fallen out of love with actorly excess?
Currently, Day-Lewis is back in the limelight, with some hesitation, promoting his latest movie Anemone. He is using this to express his anger at how method acting is viewed. “I am somewhat annoyed these days when I hear various individuals talking carelessly and using phrases like ‘fully embraced the Method’, which seems is meant to imply that a person’s acting insane in an extreme fashion,” he told a major publication. “People tends to focus on superficial details of the work, and these elements always seem to involve some form of self-punishment or an experience that causes extreme unease or mental instability. But of course, in the life for a performer, it has to principally be about the internal work.”
A World of Imitators
Frankly, it appears like Day-Lewis has come out from seclusion and found himself shocked by the world that has developed in his image. When you are widely considered 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 spending two days in solitary confinement without food or water (for In the Name of the Father), it’s natural that other actors will want to emulate that example by imitating their idol.
In other words, we exist in an environment full of half-cocked Day-Lewis impersonators who want nothing more than to demonstrate the sheer amount of dedication they put into their roles. At the shallow end 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 became an Italian native for a year and a half in preparation.
Additionally, there is Jared Leto, who chose to immerse himself in the character of the Joker (for Suicide Squad) by sending “disturbing” gifts to fellow cast members. These items, according to various accounts, included dead pigs and rats to intimate objects and personal hygiene products, although Leto denied the most extreme claims. And then, of course, we have Jim Carrey, who went so deep as Andy Kaufman for Man on the Moon that filmmakers succeeded in creating a feature-length documentary from behind-the-scenes footage of him making life as impossible as he could for his colleagues.
Contemporary Method Practitioners
The main practitioner of the Method currently would appear to be Jeremy Strong (formerly an assistant to Day-Lewis), whose approach while filming Succession was so laboriously intensive that it became the subject of a derisive New Yorker profile, including statements from individuals who were worried for his behaviour (“The toll on himself that worries me,” remarked co-star Brian Cox) or annoyed beyond all measure by it (“I remember him causing others to react with exasperation,” said an unnamed co-star).
The actor says he ‘did not plan to stop acting, really’
There are so many other examples. Andrew Garfield went celibate for six months while preparing for Silence. Leonardo DiCaprio rested inside a dead animal for The Revenant. There’s a fighting chance that actor Austin Butler continues to talk like Elvis Presley, years following the movie’s release. Each of these instances, to some extent, is meant to invoke the seriousness with which Day-Lewis takes his work.
An Admirable Yet Challenging Battle
And, while his fightback against method detractors might be noble, a brief promotional cycle may prove insufficient to alter perceptions, not to mention 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 simply start making more films. Surely everyone would support that idea.
