It has been a long while since the public caught a glimpse of the acclaimed actor Daniel Day-Lewis. Following his statement in 2017 declaring he would no longer work as an actor, prior to the debut of The Phantom Thread, the actor withdrew from the spotlight. However, during his hiatus, his reputation expanded further.
The Legend of His Acting Method
Primarily, this legend centers on his preferred style of working. As someone who famously disappears into his characters – for instance, while filming the Lincoln biopic, he had the director address him as “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 as Abraham Lincoln? Was it accurate that 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?
Madness in their method: have we fallen out of love with over-the-top performances?
Currently, Daniel Day-Lewis is back to public attention, somewhat reluctantly, promoting his latest movie Anemone. He is using this to vocalise his anger regarding how method acting is viewed. “I am somewhat annoyed these days to hear all kinds of people gobbling off and using phrases like ‘fully embraced the Method’, which seems suggests that someone is acting insane in a drastic way,” he stated to a major publication. “Everyone tends to focus on superficial aspects of acting, and these elements typically include some form of self-punishment or an experience that causes a severe discomfort or psychological strain. 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 as if the actor has come out from his retreat and found himself aghast at the world that has been created in his image. If you’re widely considered among the best performers in history, and your approach includes headbutting a dummy to the point of injury (in Gangs of New York) or spending 48 hours in isolation deprived of sustenance (during In the Name of the Father), then it stands to reason that fellow performers will attempt to emulate that example by imitating their idol.
Essentially, we now live in an environment full of half-cocked Day-Lewis impersonators who strive only to show the world the sheer amount of effort they put into a character. At the shallow end of this trend there are performers such as Lady Gaga, who was so desperate to earn an Academy Award with House of Gucci that she dedicated the whole campaign trying to convince everyone that she transformed into functionally Italian for a year and a half as preparation.
Additionally, there is Jared Leto, who decided to immerse himself in the character as the Joker (for Suicide Squad) through sending “horrifying” presents to fellow cast members. These items, depending on who you ask, included dead pigs and rats to intimate objects and used condoms, though Leto denied the most extreme claims. And then, of course, we have Jim Carrey, who went so deep into Andy Kaufman for Man on the Moon that they succeeded to get a feature-length documentary out of B-roll of him causing difficulties as impossible as he could for his colleagues.
Contemporary Method Practitioners
The main practitioner of the Method at the moment seems to be Jeremy Strong (once Day-Lewis’s assistant), whose approach while filming Succession was so rigorously detailed that it formed the subject of a derisive magazine feature, full of quotes from individuals who were worried for his behaviour (“The toll on himself that worries me,” remarked co-star Brian Cox) or extremely irritated by it (“I recall him causing everyone else to react with exasperation,” said an unnamed co-star).
The actor says he ‘did not plan to retire, truly’
We have so many other examples. Andrew Garfield abstained from sex 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 in the style of Elvis, three years after that film came out. All of this, to some extent, is meant to invoke the seriousness with which Day-Lewis approaches his work.
A Noble But Uphill Fight
And, while his fightback against method detractors could be commendable, a brief promotional cycle might not be enough to alter perceptions, let alone their practices. Perhaps if he wants to make audiences recall what method acting is, or to demonstrate what it can achieve, then Day-Lewis’s best bet is to just start making additional movies. Surely everyone would get behind that.
