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 pursue acting, prior to the debut of Phantom Thread, the actor quietly faded from view. Yet, during his hiatus, his legend has only grown.
The Legend Surrounding His Method
Largely, this reputation centers on his favored approach to roles. Being an actor who famously disappears into his characters – for example, while filming the Lincoln biopic, reportedly asked the director address him as “Mr. President” throughout the shoot – audiences has become more fascinated with how he works. Did he really send messages to co-star Sally Field as Abraham Lincoln? Did he consumed solely animals he’d killed for Last of the Mohicans? And did he demand receiving food via spoon for My Left Foot?
Madness in their method: have we fallen out of love with actorly excess?
Currently, Daniel Day-Lewis is back to public attention, somewhat reluctantly, promoting his latest movie Anemone. And he is taking this chance to express his frustration at how the Method technique is perceived. “I’m a little cross nowadays to hear various individuals talking carelessly and using phrases like ‘gone full method’, which I think suggests that someone is behaving like a lunatic in an extreme fashion,” he stated to a major publication. “Everyone tends to focus on superficial details of the work, and those details typically include some form of self-flagellation or a situation that imposes upon oneself a severe discomfort or psychological strain. However, in the life of an actor, it has to mainly focus on the internal work.”
A World Full of Followers
To be honest, this sounds like the actor has come out from his retreat only to discover aghast at the acting community that has developed mirroring his methods. When you are widely considered among the best performers in history, and your approach involves headbutting a dummy until you break your nose (in Gangs of New York) or spending two days in solitary confinement deprived of sustenance (for In the Name of the Father), then it stands to reason that fellow performers will attempt to emulate that example by imitating your hero.
In other words, we exist in an environment 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 the pool there are performers such as Lady Gaga, who was so desperate to earn an Academy Award for House of Gucci that she spent 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 deeply embed himself into the role as the Joker (in Suicide Squad) by sending “horrifying” presents to his castmates. These items, according to various accounts, range from dead pigs and rats to intimate objects and used condoms, though the actor refuted those worst excesses. Then, of course, there is Jim Carrey, who went so deep into Andy Kaufman during Man on the Moon that filmmakers literally managed to get a full-length documentary out of B-roll of him making life as impossible as he could 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 approach while filming Succession was so rigorously detailed that it formed the subject of a derisive New Yorker profile, full of quotes from individuals who were worried for his behaviour (“The toll to himself concerns me,” said co-star Brian Cox) or extremely irritated by it (“I recall [him] making others to react with exasperation,” said an unnamed co-star).
Daniel Day-Lewis claims he ‘did not plan to stop acting, really’
We have so many other examples. Andrew Garfield went celibate for six months for Silence. Leonardo DiCaprio slept in an animal carcass during The Revenant. There’s a fighting chance that Austin Butler continues to talk like Elvis Presley, three years after the movie’s release. All of this, in part, aims to evoke the seriousness with which Day-Lewis takes his work.
An Admirable Yet Challenging Battle
Moreover, while his fightback against method detractors might be noble, a brief promotional cycle might not be enough to alter perceptions, not to mention their practices. Maybe if he wishes to remind people the true essence of the Method, or to demonstrate what it can achieve, then the optimal strategy for Day-Lewis is to simply begin producing more films. Surely we could all support that idea.
