It has been quite some time since anyone saw or heard from Daniel Day-Lewis. After he announcement in 2017 declaring he would cease to pursue acting, just before the debut of Phantom Thread, Day-Lewis quietly faded from view. Yet, during his hiatus, his legend has only grown.
The Mythos of His Method
Largely, this legend revolves around 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 – audiences has become increasingly obsessed with his process. Is it true he really send texts to Sally Field as Abraham Lincoln? Did he only eat animals he’d killed during Last of the Mohicans? And did he demand being spoon-fed while filming My Left Foot?
Extreme acting methods: have we fallen out of love with over-the-top performances?
Now, Day-Lewis has returned in the limelight, somewhat reluctantly, for his new film Anemone. And he is using this to vocalise his anger regarding how the Method technique is perceived. “I’m a little cross nowadays when I hear various individuals talking carelessly and saying things like ‘fully embraced the Method’, which I think is meant to imply that someone is acting insane in a drastic way,” he told a major publication. “Everyone tends to focus on the less important details of the work, and those details typically include some form of self-punishment or a situation that imposes upon oneself extreme unease or mental instability. But of course, in the career for a performer, it has to mainly focus on the internal work.”
A World Full of Followers
To be honest, this sounds as if the actor has emerged from his retreat only to discover shocked by the world that has developed in his image. If you’re widely considered one of the greatest actors in history, and your process includes headbutting a dummy to the point of injury (for Gangs of New York) or spending 48 hours in isolation without food or water (for In the Name of the Father), then it stands to reason that fellow performers will attempt to fill that vacuum by trying to mimic your hero.
Essentially, we now live in an environment populated by imperfect Day-Lewis impersonators who strive only to show the world 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 win an Oscar for House of Gucci that she dedicated the whole campaign 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 into the role as the Joker (in Suicide Squad) by sending “disturbing” gifts to his castmates. These, depending on who you ask, included deceased animals to anal beads and personal hygiene products, though Leto denied those worst excesses. Then, of course, we have Jim Carrey, who immersed himself so fully into Andy Kaufman during Man on the Moon that they literally managed to get a feature-length documentary out of B-roll of him causing difficulties as impossible as he could for his colleagues.
Contemporary Followers of the Method
The foremost practitioner of the Method at the moment seems to be Jeremy Strong (formerly an assistant to Day-Lewis), whose process while filming Succession was so laboriously intensive that it became the basis of a critical New Yorker profile, full of quotes from people who were worried for his behaviour (“The toll to himself concerns me,” said Brian Cox) or annoyed beyond all measure by his actions (“I remember [him] making others roll their eyes,” said an unnamed co-star).
The actor says he ‘did not plan to stop acting, really’
There are numerous additional cases. Andrew Garfield abstained from sex for six months for Silence. Leonardo DiCaprio rested inside a dead animal during The Revenant. It’s quite possible that actor Austin Butler still speaks like Elvis Presley, three years after the movie’s release. Each of these instances, to some extent, is meant to invoke the dedication in which Day-Lewis takes his work.
A Noble But Uphill Battle
Moreover, although his rebuttal against method detractors could be commendable, a brief promotional cycle may prove insufficient to change anyone’s mind, 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 simply begin producing more films. Certainly everyone would support that idea.
