It’s been a long while since the public caught a glimpse of Daniel Day-Lewis. After he statement in 2017 declaring he would cease to work as an actor, just before the debut of The Phantom Thread, Day-Lewis quietly faded from view. However, during his hiatus, his reputation has only grown.
The Legend of His Method
Primarily, this legend revolves around his preferred approach to roles. Being an actor who famously immerses himself in the roles he plays – for example, while filming the Lincoln biopic, he had Steven Spielberg address him as “Mr President” for the entire production – audiences has grown increasingly obsessed with his process. Is it true he really send texts to Sally Field as Abraham Lincoln? Did he only eat animals he’d killed for The Last of the Mohicans? And did he demand receiving food via spoon while filming My Left Foot?
Madness in their method: have we fallen out of love with over-the-top performances?
Currently, Day-Lewis has returned to public attention, somewhat reluctantly, promoting his latest movie Anemone. He is taking this chance to vocalise his frustration at how the Method technique is perceived. “I’m a little cross nowadays when I hear all kinds of people gobbling off and saying things like ‘fully embraced the Method’, which I think is meant to imply that a person’s behaving like a lunatic in an extreme fashion,” he stated to the New York Times. “Everyone tends to focus on the less important aspects of acting, and these elements typically include some form of self-flagellation or a situation that causes extreme unease or mental instability. But of course, in the life of an actor, it must mainly focus on the inner transformation.”
An Industry Full of Followers
Frankly, it appears like Day-Lewis has emerged from his retreat and found himself aghast at the world that has been created in his image. When you are regarded as one of the greatest actors in history, and your approach includes striking a prop until you break your nose (in Gangs of New York) or spending two days in isolation deprived of sustenance (during In the Name of the Father), it’s natural that fellow performers will attempt to emulate that example by imitating your hero.
In other words, we now live in an environment full of half-cocked imitators of Day-Lewis who want nothing more than to demonstrate the sheer amount of dedication they put into a character. At the shallow end of the pool there are performers such as Lady Gaga, who was so desperate to win an Oscar for House of Gucci that she spent the whole campaign trying to convince everyone that she transformed into functionally Italian over 18 months as preparation.
Then we have Jared Leto, who chose to deeply embed himself into the role of the Joker (for Suicide Squad) through sending “horrifying” gifts to fellow cast members. These, depending on who you ask, range from deceased animals to anal beads and used condoms, though the actor refuted the most extreme claims. And then, naturally, we have Jim Carrey, who went so deep into Andy Kaufman during Man on the Moon that they literally managed in creating a feature-length documentary out of B-roll of him making life 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 (formerly Day-Lewis’s assistant), whose approach while filming Succession was so laboriously intensive that it became the basis of a critical New Yorker profile, full of quotes from individuals who were worried for his behaviour (“It’s the cost to himself that worries me,” said co-star Brian Cox) or annoyed beyond all measure by his actions (“I remember [him] making others roll their eyes,” said an anonymous cast member).
The actor says he ‘never intended to stop acting, really’
We have so many other examples. Andrew Garfield went celibate for six months for Silence. Leonardo DiCaprio rested inside a dead animal during The Revenant. It’s quite possible that actor Austin Butler still speaks in the style of Elvis, three years after that film came out. All of this, in part, aims to evoke the seriousness with which Day-Lewis takes his craft.
A Noble Yet Challenging Fight
Moreover, while his fightback to critics of the Method could be commendable, a brief promotional cycle may prove insufficient to change anyone’s mind, let alone their practices. Perhaps 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 begin producing more films. Certainly we could all get behind that.
