It has been a long while since anyone caught a glimpse of Daniel Day-Lewis. After he announcement in 2017 declaring he would no longer pursue acting, just before the debut of Phantom Thread, the actor quietly faded from view. Yet, in his absence, his legend has only grown.
The Mythos Surrounding His Acting Method
Largely, this legend centers on his preferred style of working. Being an actor who famously disappears into his characters – for example, during Lincoln, reportedly asked the director call him “Mr. President” throughout the shoot – the world has grown increasingly obsessed with his process. Is it true he really send messages to co-star Sally Field in character as Lincoln? Did he consumed solely animals he’d killed for Last of the Mohicans? Did he insist on being spoon-fed for My Left Foot?
Madness in their method: have we lost interest with over-the-top performances?
Currently, Day-Lewis has returned to public attention, with some hesitation, promoting his latest movie Anemone. He is taking this chance to express 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 seems is meant to imply that a person’s acting insane in a drastic way,” he stated to the New York Times. “Everyone often concentrate on superficial details of the work, and those details typically include some form of self-punishment or an experience that causes a severe discomfort or mental instability. But of course, in the life for a performer, it has to mainly focus on the inner transformation.”
A World of Imitators
To be honest, this sounds as if the actor has come out from seclusion only to discover shocked by the world that has developed in his image. When you are regarded as one of the greatest performers to ever work, and your approach includes striking a prop to the point of injury (in Gangs of New York) or spending two days in solitary confinement without food or water (for In the Name of the Father), it’s natural that other actors will attempt to emulate that example by imitating your hero.
In other words, we exist in an environment full of imperfect Day-Lewis impersonators who strive only to demonstrate the extensive degree of effort they invest in their roles. At the shallow end of the pool we have people like Lady Gaga, who was determined to earn an Academy Award with House of Gucci that she dedicated the entire promotion attempting to persuade people that she became an Italian native for a year and a half in preparation.
Then we have Jared Leto, who decided to immerse himself in the character as the Joker (in Suicide Squad) through sending “horrifying” gifts to fellow cast members. These items, depending on who you ask, included dead pigs and rats to anal beads and personal hygiene products, although Leto denied those worst excesses. Then, naturally, we have Jim Carrey, who immersed himself so fully as Andy Kaufman during Man on the Moon that filmmakers literally managed to get a feature-length documentary from behind-the-scenes footage of him causing difficulties as impossible as he could for his colleagues.
Contemporary Followers of the Method
The main Method Guy currently seems to be Jeremy Strong (formerly Day-Lewis’s assistant), whose process while filming Succession was so rigorously detailed 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 to himself concerns me,” remarked co-star Brian Cox) or annoyed beyond all measure by his actions (“I remember [him] making others roll their eyes,” said an unnamed co-star).
Daniel Day-Lewis says he ‘did not plan to retire, really’
There are so many other examples. Andrew Garfield abstained from sex for six months for Silence. Leonardo DiCaprio slept in a dead animal during The Revenant. It’s quite possible that actor Austin Butler still speaks in the style of Elvis, years following that film came out. All of this, to some extent, is meant to invoke the seriousness with which Day-Lewis takes his work.
A Noble Yet Challenging Battle
And, while his fightback to critics of the Method might be noble, a short publicity tour might not be enough to alter perceptions, not to mention their behaviour. Perhaps if he wants to remind people what method acting is, or to demonstrate its potential results, then the optimal strategy for Day-Lewis is to just start making more films. Certainly we could all get behind that.
