It has been a long while since the public caught a glimpse of Daniel Day-Lewis. Following his statement in 2017 declaring he would cease to pursue acting, just before the debut of The Phantom Thread, Day-Lewis quietly faded from view. Yet, in his absence, his legend expanded further.
The Mythos Surrounding His Acting Method
Largely, this legend revolves around his favored approach to roles. Being an actor who famously immerses himself in his characters – for instance, during Lincoln, he had the director address him as “Mr President” throughout the shoot – audiences has grown more fascinated with his process. Is it true he really send messages to co-star Sally Field in character as Lincoln? Was it accurate that he only eat animals he’d killed during The Last of the Mohicans? And did he demand receiving food via spoon for My Left Foot?
Madness in their method: have we fallen out of love with actorly excess?
Now, Daniel Day-Lewis has returned in the limelight, somewhat reluctantly, promoting his latest movie Anemone. He is using this to express his frustration at how method acting is viewed. “I am somewhat annoyed these days to hear various individuals talking carelessly and using phrases like ‘fully embraced the Method’, which seems suggests that a person’s behaving like a lunatic in an extreme fashion,” he stated to the New York Times. “Everyone often concentrate on the less important aspects of acting, and those details always seem to involve some form of self-punishment or a situation that imposes upon oneself extreme unease or psychological strain. However, in the life of an actor, it has to principally be about the internal work.”
A World Full of Followers
Frankly, this sounds like Day-Lewis has come out from seclusion and found himself aghast at the acting community that has been created in his image. When you are widely considered among the best performers to ever work, and your approach involves striking a prop to the point of injury (for Gangs of New York) or enduring two days in isolation deprived of sustenance (for In the Name of the Father), then it stands to reason that other actors will want to fill that vacuum by trying to mimic your hero.
Essentially, we exist in a landscape populated by half-cocked Day-Lewis impersonators who want nothing more than to show the world the sheer amount of effort they invest in their roles. At the shallow end of this trend there are performers such as Lady Gaga, who was so desperate to earn an Academy Award with House of Gucci that she dedicated the entire promotion attempting to persuade people that she became functionally Italian for a year and a half as preparation.
Then we have Jared Leto, who chose to deeply embed himself into the role as the Joker (in Suicide Squad) by sending “disturbing” gifts to fellow cast members. These, depending on who you ask, range from deceased animals to anal beads and used condoms, although the actor refuted those worst excesses. And then, naturally, we have Jim Carrey, who went so deep into Andy Kaufman for Man on the Moon that filmmakers succeeded in creating a feature-length documentary out of B-roll of him making life as impossible as he could for his colleagues.
Contemporary Followers of the Method
The foremost Method Guy at the moment seems to be Jeremy Strong (once an assistant to Day-Lewis), whose approach during Succession was so laboriously intensive 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 recall [him] making others to react with exasperation,” said an anonymous cast member).
The actor claims he ‘did not plan to retire, truly’
There are so many other examples. Andrew Garfield abstained from sex for six months while preparing for Silence. Leonardo DiCaprio rested inside a dead animal for The Revenant. There’s a fighting chance that Austin Butler continues to talk in the style of Elvis, three years after the movie’s release. Each of these instances, to some extent, aims to evoke the seriousness with which Day-Lewis takes his craft.
An Admirable Yet Challenging Fight
Moreover, although his rebuttal against method detractors could be commendable, a short publicity tour may prove insufficient to alter perceptions, not to mention their practices. Perhaps if he wants to remind people what method acting is, or to show them its potential results, then the optimal strategy for Day-Lewis is to simply start making more films. Surely everyone would support that idea.
