It’s been a long while since the public saw or heard from the acclaimed actor Daniel Day-Lewis. After he announcement in 2017 declaring he would no longer work as an actor, prior to the debut of Phantom Thread, the actor quietly faded from view. Yet, during his hiatus, his legend has only grown.
The Legend Surrounding His Method
Largely, this legend centers on his preferred approach to roles. Being an actor who famously disappears into the roles he plays – for example, during Lincoln, he had the director address him as “Mr. President” throughout the shoot – audiences has grown increasingly obsessed with how he works. Is it true he actually sent 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 being spoon-fed while filming My Left Foot?
Madness in their method: has the public fallen out of love with over-the-top performances?
Now, Daniel Day-Lewis is back to public attention, somewhat reluctantly, for his new film Anemone. He is using this to express his frustration regarding how the Method technique is viewed. “I’m a little cross nowadays when I hear all kinds of people gobbling off and using phrases like ‘gone full method’, which seems suggests that a person’s behaving like a lunatic in a drastic way,” he told a major publication. “Everyone often concentrate on superficial aspects of acting, and those details typically include some form of self-punishment or an experience that imposes upon oneself extreme unease or mental instability. But of course, in the life for a performer, it has to mainly focus on the internal work.”
A World of Imitators
Frankly, it appears as if the actor has come out from seclusion only to discover shocked by the world that has been created in his image. If you’re widely considered one of the greatest performers to ever work, and your approach involves headbutting a dummy to the point of injury (for Gangs of New York) or spending 48 hours in isolation deprived of sustenance (during In the Name of the Father), it’s natural that other actors will attempt to emulate that example by trying to mimic your hero.
Essentially, we now live in a landscape full of half-cocked Day-Lewis impersonators who strive only to show the world 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 for House of Gucci that she spent the whole campaign trying to convince everyone that she became functionally Italian over 18 months as preparation.
Then we have Jared Leto, who decided to immerse himself in the character as the Joker (for Suicide Squad) by sending “horrifying” gifts to fellow cast members. These items, according to various accounts, range from deceased animals to anal beads and personal hygiene products, although the actor refuted those worst excesses. Then, of course, we have Jim Carrey, who immersed himself so fully as Andy Kaufman during Man on the Moon that filmmakers literally managed in creating a feature-length documentary from behind-the-scenes footage of him making life as impossible as he could for his colleagues.
Contemporary Method Practitioners
The foremost Method Guy currently would appear to be Jeremy Strong (once an assistant to Day-Lewis), whose process while filming Succession was so laboriously intensive that it became the subject of a derisive magazine feature, full of quotes from people who were either concerned about his conduct (“It’s the cost on himself that worries me,” said co-star Brian Cox) or annoyed beyond all measure by it (“I remember [him] making others roll their eyes,” stated an unnamed co-star).
Daniel Day-Lewis says he ‘did not plan to stop acting, truly’
There are numerous additional cases. Andrew Garfield abstained from sex over half a year while preparing for Silence. Leonardo DiCaprio rested inside an animal carcass for The Revenant. There’s a fighting chance that actor Austin Butler still speaks in the style of Elvis, years following that film came out. Each of these instances, in part, aims to evoke the dedication with which Day-Lewis takes his work.
An Admirable But Uphill Battle
Moreover, while his fightback to critics of the Method could be commendable, a brief promotional cycle may prove insufficient to alter perceptions, not to mention their behaviour. Perhaps if he wants to make audiences recall the true essence of the Method, or to demonstrate what it can achieve, then Day-Lewis’s best bet is to simply begin producing more films. Surely everyone would get behind that.
