It has been a long while since anyone saw or heard from Daniel Day-Lewis. Following his announcement in 2017 declaring he would no longer pursue acting, just before the debut of The Phantom Thread, the actor quietly faded from view. Yet, in his absence, his legend expanded further.
The Legend Surrounding His Acting Method
Primarily, this reputation revolves around his favored style of working. Being an actor known for disappears into his characters – for example, during Lincoln, he had Steven Spielberg call him “Mr President” for the entire production – audiences has become more fascinated with how he works. Did he actually sent texts to Sally Field as Abraham Lincoln? Did he consumed solely game he hunted for The Last of the Mohicans? And did he demand being spoon-fed for My Left Foot?
Extreme acting methods: has the public lost interest with actorly excess?
Currently, Daniel Day-Lewis is back to public attention, somewhat reluctantly, for his new film Anemone. And he is using this to express his anger at how the Method technique is perceived. “I’m a little cross these days when I hear all kinds of people talking carelessly and saying things like ‘gone full method’, which I think is meant to imply that a person’s behaving like a lunatic in an extreme fashion,” he told a major publication. “Everyone often concentrate on superficial details of the work, and those details typically include some form of self-punishment or a situation that imposes upon oneself extreme unease or psychological strain. However, in the career for a performer, it has to mainly focus on the internal work.”
A World of Imitators
Frankly, it appears as if Day-Lewis has emerged from seclusion only to discover aghast at the acting community that has developed mirroring his methods. If you’re regarded as among the best actors to ever work, and your approach involves headbutting a dummy to the point of injury (in Gangs of New York) or enduring two days in solitary confinement deprived of sustenance (during In the Name of the Father), it’s natural that fellow performers will attempt to fill that vacuum by trying to mimic your hero.
In other words, we now live in a landscape full of half-cocked Day-Lewis impersonators who strive only to show the world the extensive degree of effort they invest in a character. At the shallow end of this trend there are performers such as Lady Gaga, who was determined to win an Oscar for House of Gucci that she spent the entire promotion attempting to persuade people that she became an Italian native for a year and a half as preparation.
Then we have Jared Leto, who decided to immerse himself in the character of the Joker (for Suicide Squad) by sending “horrifying” presents to fellow cast members. These, depending on who you ask, range from dead pigs and rats to anal beads and used condoms, though Leto denied those worst excesses. Then, naturally, there is Jim Carrey, who immersed himself so fully as Andy Kaufman during Man on the Moon that filmmakers succeeded to get a full-length documentary out of B-roll of him making life as impossible as he could for his colleagues.
The Modern Followers of the Method
The foremost practitioner of the Method currently seems to be Jeremy Strong (formerly Day-Lewis’s assistant), whose process while filming Succession was so rigorously detailed that it formed the subject of a derisive New Yorker profile, including statements from people who were worried about his conduct (“The toll on himself that worries me,” remarked Brian Cox) or extremely irritated by it (“I remember him causing everyone else to react with exasperation,” said an unnamed co-star).
The actor claims he ‘did not plan to stop acting, truly’
We have numerous additional cases. Andrew Garfield went celibate over half a year for Silence. Leonardo DiCaprio slept in a dead animal for The Revenant. It’s quite possible that Austin Butler still speaks like Elvis Presley, years following that film came out. All of this, to some extent, is meant to invoke the dedication with which Day-Lewis approaches his craft.
A Noble But Uphill Battle
And, while his fightback against method detractors 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 show them what it can achieve, then the optimal strategy for Day-Lewis is to simply start making more films. Surely we could all get behind that.
