It’s been a long while since anyone caught a glimpse of Daniel Day-Lewis. Following his announcement in 2017 declaring he would no longer pursue acting, just before the debut of Phantom Thread, Day-Lewis withdrew from the spotlight. However, in his absence, his legend expanded further.
The Legend Surrounding His Method
Largely, this reputation centers on his favored approach to roles. Being an actor known for immerses himself in his characters – for example, during Lincoln, he had Steven Spielberg address him as “Mr. President” throughout the shoot – audiences has become increasingly obsessed with how he works. Did he actually sent messages to co-star Sally Field as Abraham Lincoln? Did he only eat animals he’d killed for The Last of the Mohicans? Did he insist on being spoon-fed while filming My Left Foot?
Extreme acting methods: have we lost interest with actorly excess?
Now, Daniel Day-Lewis has returned to public attention, somewhat reluctantly, promoting his latest movie Anemone. And he is taking this chance to express his anger at how the Method technique is viewed. “I’m a little cross nowadays to hear various individuals gobbling off and saying things like ‘fully embraced the Method’, which seems is meant to imply that a person’s acting insane in an extreme fashion,” he told the New York Times. “Everyone tends to focus on the less important aspects of acting, and those details always seem to involve some form of self-flagellation or a situation that imposes upon oneself extreme unease or mental instability. However, in the life for a performer, it has to principally be about the internal work.”
An Industry of Imitators
To be honest, this sounds like Day-Lewis has come out from his retreat only to discover aghast at the acting community that has been created in his image. If you’re regarded as one of the greatest actors in history, and your approach includes headbutting a dummy until you break your nose (for Gangs of New York) or spending 48 hours in isolation deprived of sustenance (for In the Name of the Father), then it stands to reason that fellow performers will want to emulate that example by imitating their idol.
Essentially, we exist in a landscape populated by imperfect imitators of Day-Lewis who strive only to demonstrate the sheer amount of dedication they put into a character. At the shallow end of this trend we have people like Lady Gaga, who was so desperate to win an Oscar with House of Gucci that she spent the entire promotion attempting to persuade people that she became functionally Italian over 18 months in preparation.
Then we have Jared Leto, who chose to deeply embed himself into the role of the Joker (for Suicide Squad) through sending “disturbing” presents to fellow cast members. These, according to various accounts, included dead pigs and rats to intimate objects and used condoms, although the actor refuted those worst excesses. And then, naturally, there is Jim Carrey, who immersed himself so fully into Andy Kaufman for Man on the Moon that they succeeded to get a full-length documentary out of B-roll of him making life as impossible as he could for everyone around him.
The Modern Method Practitioners
The foremost practitioner of the Method currently would appear to be Jeremy Strong (once an assistant to Day-Lewis), whose approach while filming Succession was so laboriously intensive that it formed the basis of a derisive New Yorker profile, full of quotes from people who were either concerned for his behaviour (“The toll on himself that worries me,” said Brian Cox) or annoyed beyond all measure by his actions (“I remember him causing others to react with exasperation,” said an unnamed co-star).
Daniel Day-Lewis says he ‘did not plan to stop acting, truly’
There are numerous additional cases. Andrew Garfield went celibate over half a year for Silence. Leonardo DiCaprio slept in an animal carcass for The Revenant. There’s a fighting chance that Austin Butler continues to talk like Elvis Presley, three years after that film came out. Each of these instances, to some extent, is meant to invoke the seriousness with which Day-Lewis takes his work.
An Admirable Yet Challenging Battle
Moreover, 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 what method acting is, or to show them its potential results, then Day-Lewis’s best bet is to simply begin producing additional movies. Surely we could all support that idea.
