It’s been quite some time since anyone caught a glimpse of Daniel Day-Lewis. After he statement in 2017 that he would no longer work as an actor, just before the debut of The Phantom Thread, the actor quietly faded from view. However, in his absence, his legend has only grown.
The Mythos Surrounding His Method
Largely, this legend centers on his preferred approach to roles. Being an actor known for disappears into the roles he plays – for example, during the Lincoln biopic, he had the director call him “Mr. President” for the entire production – the world has become increasingly obsessed with how he works. Is it true he really send texts to Sally Field as Abraham Lincoln? Was it accurate that he consumed solely animals he’d killed during Last of the Mohicans? And did he demand being spoon-fed for My Left Foot?
Madness in their method: have we fallen out of love with actorly excess?
Currently, Day-Lewis is back in the limelight, somewhat reluctantly, promoting his latest movie Anemone. And he is taking this chance to vocalise his frustration regarding how method acting is perceived. “I’m a little cross nowadays to hear all kinds of people gobbling off and saying things like ‘gone full method’, which I think is meant to imply that a person’s behaving like a lunatic in a drastic way,” he stated to the New York Times. “Everyone tends to focus on the less important details of the work, and those details typically include some form of self-flagellation or an experience that causes extreme unease or mental instability. However, in the life of an actor, it must principally be about the internal work.”
A World Full of Followers
Frankly, this sounds like Day-Lewis has emerged from his retreat and found himself aghast at the world that has been created mirroring his methods. If you’re widely considered one of the greatest performers to ever work, and your process involves headbutting a dummy to the point of injury (for Gangs of New York) or spending two days in isolation without food or water (for 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 a landscape populated by imperfect Day-Lewis impersonators who strive only to demonstrate the extensive degree 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 with House of Gucci that she spent the whole campaign trying to convince everyone that she became functionally Italian over 18 months 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 fellow cast members. These, according to various accounts, range from deceased animals to intimate objects and used condoms, although the actor refuted those worst excesses. And then, of course, we have Jim Carrey, who went so deep into Andy Kaufman during Man on the Moon that filmmakers literally managed to get a full-length documentary from behind-the-scenes footage of him making life to the utmost for his colleagues.
Contemporary Followers of the Method
The main practitioner of the Method currently seems to be Jeremy Strong (once an assistant to Day-Lewis), whose process during Succession was so laboriously intensive that it formed the basis of a critical New Yorker profile, including statements from people who were either concerned about his conduct (“It’s the cost to himself that worries me,” said Brian Cox) or extremely irritated by it (“I remember him causing others roll their eyes,” stated an unnamed co-star).
Daniel Day-Lewis claims he ‘never intended to stop acting, truly’
There are numerous additional cases. Andrew Garfield abstained from sex over half a year while preparing for Silence. Leonardo DiCaprio rested inside a dead animal during The Revenant. It’s quite possible that actor Austin Butler still speaks like Elvis Presley, 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 work.
An Admirable Yet Challenging Battle
Moreover, although his rebuttal to critics of the Method could be commendable, a short publicity tour might not be enough to alter perceptions, let alone their behaviour. Perhaps if he wishes to remind people what method acting is, or to demonstrate what it can achieve, then Day-Lewis’s best bet is to just start making additional movies. Certainly we could all support that idea.
