It has been quite some time since anyone saw or heard from the acclaimed actor Daniel Day-Lewis. Following his statement in 2017 that he would no longer pursue acting, just before the release of The Phantom Thread, the actor quietly faded from view. However, during his hiatus, his legend has only grown.
The Mythos of His Acting Method
Primarily, this reputation revolves around his preferred style of working. Being an actor known for disappears into his characters – for instance, during Lincoln, reportedly asked the director address him as “Mr President” throughout the shoot – the world has become more fascinated with his process. Is it true 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 The Last of the Mohicans? And did he demand being spoon-fed for My Left Foot?
Extreme acting methods: have we fallen out of love with over-the-top performances?
Now, Day-Lewis is back in the limelight, somewhat reluctantly, promoting his latest movie Anemone. He is taking this chance to express his frustration at how method acting is viewed. “I’m a little cross nowadays to hear all kinds of people gobbling off and using phrases like ‘gone full method’, which seems is meant to imply that someone is acting insane in an extreme fashion,” he told a major publication. “People often concentrate on superficial aspects of acting, and those details typically include some sort of self-punishment or a situation that imposes upon oneself a severe discomfort or psychological strain. But of course, in the life for a performer, it has to mainly focus on the internal work.”
A World Full of Followers
Frankly, this sounds as if the actor has come out from his retreat only to discover aghast at the world that has developed mirroring his methods. When you are widely considered one of the greatest performers to ever work, and your approach involves headbutting a dummy to the point of injury (for Gangs of New York) or spending 48 hours in isolation deprived of sustenance (during In the Name of the Father), it’s natural that fellow performers will attempt to fill that vacuum 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 demonstrate the sheer amount of dedication they put into their roles. On the milder side of this trend we have people like Lady Gaga, who was determined to win an Oscar for House of Gucci that she dedicated the whole campaign trying to convince everyone that she transformed into functionally Italian over 18 months as preparation.
Then we have Jared Leto, who decided to deeply embed himself into the role as the Joker (for Suicide Squad) through sending “disturbing” presents to fellow cast members. These items, according to various accounts, included deceased animals to anal beads and personal hygiene products, though Leto denied those worst excesses. And then, naturally, we have Jim Carrey, who immersed himself so fully as Andy Kaufman during Man on the Moon that they succeeded in creating a full-length documentary out of B-roll of him making life to the utmost for everyone around him.
Contemporary Followers of the Method
The foremost Method Guy currently seems to be Jeremy Strong (formerly Day-Lewis’s assistant), whose process while filming Succession was so rigorously detailed that it formed the basis of a critical New Yorker profile, full of quotes from people who were either concerned for his behaviour (“It’s the cost to himself concerns me,” remarked Brian Cox) or annoyed beyond all measure by his actions (“I recall [him] making everyone else to react with exasperation,” stated an anonymous cast member).
Daniel Day-Lewis says he ‘did not plan to stop acting, really’
There are so many other examples. Andrew Garfield abstained from sex 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 still speaks in the style of Elvis, years following that film came out. Each of these instances, to some extent, is meant to invoke the seriousness with which Day-Lewis takes his craft.
A Noble But Uphill Battle
And, although his rebuttal against method detractors could be commendable, a short publicity tour may prove insufficient to change anyone’s mind, not to mention their practices. Perhaps if he wants to remind people what method acting is, or to show them what it can achieve, then Day-Lewis’s best bet is to simply begin producing more films. Surely everyone would support that idea.
