It has been quite some time since anyone saw or heard from Daniel Day-Lewis. Following his announcement in 2017 declaring he would cease to pursue acting, prior to the release of The Phantom Thread, Day-Lewis withdrew from the spotlight. However, during his hiatus, his reputation expanded further.
The Legend of His Method
Largely, this legend centers on his preferred approach to roles. Being an actor known for immerses himself in his characters – for instance, while filming the Lincoln biopic, reportedly asked the director call him “Mr President” for the entire production – the world has grown increasingly obsessed with his process. Did he really send messages to co-star Sally Field in character as Lincoln? Was it accurate that he consumed solely game he hunted for Last of the Mohicans? Did he demand receiving food via spoon while filming My Left Foot?
Madness in their method: have we fallen out of love with actorly excess?
Currently, 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 method acting is viewed. “I am somewhat annoyed these days to hear all kinds of people gobbling off and saying things like ‘gone full method’, which seems is meant to imply that a person’s behaving like a lunatic in a drastic way,” he told a major publication. “Everyone tends to focus on the less important aspects of acting, and those details always seem to involve some sort of self-punishment or a situation that causes a severe discomfort or mental instability. But of course, in the life for a performer, it must mainly focus on the inner transformation.”
A World Full of Followers
To be honest, this sounds as if Day-Lewis has emerged from seclusion only to discover aghast at the world that has developed in his image. When you are widely considered one of the greatest performers in history, and your process involves striking a prop until you break your nose (in Gangs of New York) or enduring two days in isolation without food or water (during In the Name of the Father), then it stands to reason that fellow performers will want to emulate that example by trying to mimic their idol.
In other words, we now live in a landscape populated by imperfect imitators of Day-Lewis who want nothing more than to demonstrate the sheer amount of effort they invest in a character. 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 trying to convince everyone that she became an Italian native for a year and a half as preparation.
Additionally, there is Jared Leto, who chose to immerse himself into the role of the Joker (for Suicide Squad) through sending “horrifying” gifts to fellow cast members. These, depending on who you ask, included dead pigs and rats to anal beads and used condoms, although Leto denied the most extreme claims. Then, naturally, there is Jim Carrey, who immersed himself so fully into Andy Kaufman for Man on the Moon that they literally managed to get a feature-length documentary out of B-roll of him making life as impossible as he could for everyone around him.
Contemporary Followers of the Method
The main Method Guy at the moment would appear to be Jeremy Strong (once Day-Lewis’s assistant), whose process while filming Succession was so rigorously detailed that it formed the subject of a derisive magazine feature, including statements from people who were worried about his conduct (“The toll on himself that worries me,” said co-star Brian Cox) or extremely irritated by his actions (“I remember [him] making everyone else to react with exasperation,” said an anonymous cast member).
Daniel Day-Lewis claims he ‘never intended to stop acting, really’
There are numerous additional cases. 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 actor Austin Butler continues to talk in the style of Elvis, years following that film came out. All of this, to some extent, aims to evoke the seriousness with which Day-Lewis takes his work.
An Admirable But Uphill Battle
And, although his rebuttal against method detractors could be commendable, a short publicity tour may prove insufficient to change anyone’s mind, not to mention their behaviour. Perhaps if he wants to make audiences recall the true essence of the Method, or to demonstrate its potential results, then the optimal strategy for Day-Lewis is to just start making additional movies. Certainly everyone would support that idea.
