It’s been a long while since the public caught a glimpse of Daniel Day-Lewis. Following his announcement in 2017 declaring he would no longer pursue acting, prior to the debut of The Phantom Thread, the actor withdrew from the spotlight. However, during his hiatus, his legend expanded further.
The Legend Surrounding His Method
Largely, this reputation centers on his preferred style of working. As someone known for immerses himself in his characters – for instance, while filming Lincoln, he had Steven Spielberg call him “Mr President” throughout the shoot – audiences has grown increasingly obsessed with how he works. Did he actually sent texts to Sally Field in character as Lincoln? Did he only eat animals he’d killed during Last of the Mohicans? And did he insist on being spoon-fed while filming My Left Foot?
Madness in their method: has the public fallen out of love with over-the-top performances?
Currently, Daniel Day-Lewis is back to public attention, with some hesitation, promoting his latest movie Anemone. And he is taking this chance to vocalise his anger at how method acting is perceived. “I am somewhat annoyed these days to hear various individuals gobbling off and saying things like ‘gone full method’, which seems suggests that someone is acting insane in an extreme fashion,” 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 a situation that imposes upon oneself a severe discomfort or mental instability. But of course, in the career for a performer, it has to mainly focus on the inner transformation.”
An Industry of Imitators
To be honest, this sounds like the actor has come out from his retreat only to discover shocked by the acting community that has been created mirroring his methods. When you are widely considered one of the greatest performers in history, and your approach involves headbutting a dummy to the point of injury (for Gangs of New York) or enduring two days in solitary confinement deprived of sustenance (for In the Name of the Father), it’s natural that other actors will want to fill that vacuum by trying to mimic their idol.
In other words, we now live in an environment full of half-cocked imitators of Day-Lewis who want nothing more than to demonstrate the extensive degree of dedication they put into a character. At the shallow end of this trend we have people like Lady Gaga, who was determined to earn an Academy Award for House of Gucci that she dedicated the whole campaign trying to convince everyone that she became functionally Italian for a year and a half in preparation.
Additionally, there is Jared Leto, who decided to deeply embed himself in the character of the Joker (for Suicide Squad) through sending “disturbing” gifts to fellow cast members. These items, according to various accounts, included deceased animals to anal beads and used condoms, although Leto denied those worst excesses. Then, of course, there is Jim Carrey, who went so deep as Andy Kaufman during Man on the Moon that they 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.
The Modern Method Practitioners
The main practitioner of the Method currently would appear to be Jeremy Strong (formerly Day-Lewis’s assistant), whose approach while filming Succession was so rigorously detailed that it became the basis of a critical magazine feature, full of quotes from people who were either concerned for his behaviour (“The toll to himself concerns me,” remarked co-star Brian Cox) or extremely irritated by it (“I remember [him] making others to react with exasperation,” stated an anonymous cast member).
Daniel Day-Lewis says he ‘did not plan to retire, truly’
There are so many other examples. Andrew Garfield abstained from sex over half a year while preparing for Silence. Leonardo DiCaprio slept in an animal carcass for The Revenant. There’s a fighting chance that actor Austin Butler still speaks in the style of Elvis, three years after that film came out. All of this, to some extent, is meant to invoke the seriousness in which Day-Lewis takes his craft.
An Admirable But Uphill Fight
And, while his fightback against method detractors might be noble, a brief promotional cycle 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 just start making more films. Certainly everyone would support that idea.
