It’s been quite some time since the public caught a glimpse of Daniel Day-Lewis. Following his statement in 2017 that he would cease to pursue acting, just before the release of The Phantom Thread, Day-Lewis withdrew from the spotlight. Yet, in his absence, his legend has only grown.
The Legend of His Method
Primarily, this legend revolves around his favored style of working. Being an actor known for disappears into his characters – for example, during the Lincoln biopic, he had Steven Spielberg address him as “Mr President” throughout the shoot – audiences has grown increasingly obsessed with his process. Is it true he really send messages to co-star Sally Field in character as Lincoln? Was it accurate that he consumed solely animals he’d killed during The Last of the Mohicans? Did he insist on receiving food via spoon while filming My Left Foot?
Extreme acting methods: has the public fallen out of love with over-the-top performances?
Currently, Daniel Day-Lewis is back in the limelight, with some hesitation, promoting his latest movie Anemone. He is using this to express his frustration at how the Method technique is viewed. “I’m a little cross these days when I hear various individuals talking carelessly and saying things like ‘fully embraced the Method’, which seems suggests that someone is acting insane in a drastic way,” he stated to a major publication. “People often concentrate on superficial details of the work, and those details always seem to involve some sort of self-punishment or an experience that causes a severe discomfort or mental instability. However, in the career for a performer, it must principally be about the inner transformation.”
A World of Imitators
To be honest, this sounds as if Day-Lewis has come out from his retreat and found himself aghast at the world that has developed in his image. If you’re widely considered one of the greatest performers in history, and your approach involves headbutting a dummy until you break your nose (in Gangs of New York) or enduring two days in isolation deprived of sustenance (during In the Name of the Father), then it stands to reason that fellow performers will want to fill that vacuum by imitating your hero.
Essentially, we now live in a landscape populated by half-cocked imitators of Day-Lewis who want nothing more than to show the world the extensive degree of dedication they put into their roles. At the shallow end of this trend we have people like Lady Gaga, who was so desperate to earn an Academy Award with House of Gucci that she spent the entire promotion 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 as the Joker (in Suicide Squad) by sending “horrifying” presents to his castmates. These items, according to various accounts, included deceased animals to anal beads and used condoms, though Leto denied the most extreme claims. Then, of course, we have Jim Carrey, who went so deep as Andy Kaufman during Man on the Moon that they literally managed to get a feature-length documentary from behind-the-scenes footage of him making life as impossible as he could for everyone around him.
Contemporary Method Practitioners
The main practitioner of the Method currently would appear to be Jeremy Strong (once an assistant to Day-Lewis), whose process while filming Succession was so laboriously intensive that it became the subject of a derisive magazine feature, full of quotes from individuals who were either concerned for his behaviour (“It’s the cost to himself concerns me,” said co-star Brian Cox) or extremely irritated by his actions (“I remember [him] making others to react with exasperation,” stated an anonymous cast member).
Daniel Day-Lewis says he ‘never intended to stop acting, really’
There are so many other examples. Andrew Garfield went celibate over half a year while preparing for Silence. Leonardo DiCaprio slept in a dead animal for The Revenant. There’s a fighting chance that actor Austin Butler still speaks in the style of Elvis, three years after the movie’s release. All of this, in part, aims to evoke the seriousness with which Day-Lewis approaches his work.
An Admirable Yet Challenging Battle
And, while his fightback to critics of the Method could be commendable, a short publicity tour may prove insufficient to change anyone’s mind, not to mention their behaviour. Perhaps if he wants to remind people the true essence of the Method, or to demonstrate what it can achieve, then Day-Lewis’s best bet is to just start making more films. Surely we could all support that idea.
