It has been quite some time since anyone caught a glimpse of Daniel Day-Lewis. After he statement in 2017 that he would cease to pursue acting, prior to the debut of The Phantom Thread, Day-Lewis withdrew from the spotlight. Yet, in his absence, his legend expanded further.
The Legend of His Acting Method
Primarily, this legend revolves around his favored approach to roles. As someone who famously immerses himself in his characters – for instance, while filming Lincoln, he had the director address him as “Mr. President” for the entire production – audiences has grown increasingly obsessed with how he works. Is it true he actually sent texts to Sally Field in character as Lincoln? Did he consumed solely animals he’d killed for The Last of the Mohicans? Did he insist on receiving food via spoon for My Left Foot?
Extreme acting methods: has the public fallen out of love with over-the-top performances?
Now, Day-Lewis is back in the limelight, with some hesitation, for his new film Anemone. And he is using this to express his anger at how the Method technique is perceived. “I’m a little cross these days to hear all kinds of people gobbling off and using phrases like ‘gone full method’, which seems suggests that someone is behaving like a lunatic in an extreme fashion,” he stated to the New York Times. “People often concentrate on superficial aspects of acting, and these elements always seem to involve some sort of self-punishment or a situation that imposes upon oneself a severe discomfort or mental instability. However, in the career of an actor, it must mainly focus on the inner transformation.”
A World Full of Followers
To be honest, this sounds like the actor has emerged from seclusion and found himself shocked by the world that has been created mirroring his methods. When you are widely considered among the best performers in history, and your process includes headbutting a dummy 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), then it stands to reason that fellow performers will attempt to fill that vacuum by imitating their idol.
In other words, we exist in a landscape full of half-cocked Day-Lewis impersonators who strive only 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 for House of Gucci that she spent the whole campaign trying to convince everyone that she became functionally Italian for a year and a half as preparation.
Then we have Jared Leto, who chose to deeply embed himself in the character of the Joker (for Suicide Squad) through sending “horrifying” presents to his castmates. These, depending on who you ask, included deceased animals to intimate objects and used condoms, although Leto denied those worst excesses. Then, of course, there is Jim Carrey, who immersed himself so fully as Andy Kaufman during Man on the Moon that filmmakers literally managed to get a feature-length documentary out of B-roll of him causing difficulties as impossible as he could for everyone around him.
The Modern Method Practitioners
The foremost Method Guy currently seems to be Jeremy Strong (formerly Day-Lewis’s assistant), whose approach while filming Succession was so rigorously detailed that it formed the basis of a derisive New Yorker profile, full of quotes from individuals who were either concerned about his conduct (“The toll to himself that worries me,” remarked co-star Brian Cox) or extremely irritated by his actions (“I remember [him] making others roll their eyes,” said an anonymous cast member).
Daniel Day-Lewis claims he ‘never intended to stop acting, truly’
There are so many other examples. Andrew Garfield went celibate over half a year while preparing for Silence. Leonardo DiCaprio rested inside a dead animal during The Revenant. There’s a fighting chance that actor Austin Butler continues to talk in the style of Elvis, three years after the movie’s release. All of this, to some extent, is meant to invoke the dedication in which Day-Lewis approaches his craft.
A Noble But Uphill Fight
And, while his fightback to critics of the Method could be commendable, a short publicity tour may prove insufficient to alter perceptions, let alone their behaviour. Maybe if he wishes 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. Certainly we could all get behind that.
