It has been a long while since the public caught a glimpse of the acclaimed actor Daniel Day-Lewis. After he announcement in 2017 declaring he would cease to work as an actor, just before the debut of The Phantom Thread, the actor quietly faded from view. Yet, in his absence, his legend has only grown.
The Mythos Surrounding His Acting Method
Largely, this reputation revolves around his preferred approach to roles. As someone known for disappears into his characters – for example, during Lincoln, reportedly asked the director call him “Mr President” for the entire production – the world has become more fascinated with how he works. Did he actually sent messages to co-star Sally Field as Abraham Lincoln? Did he consumed solely animals he’d killed during Last of the Mohicans? 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?
Now, Daniel Day-Lewis is back to public attention, with some hesitation, 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 when I hear various individuals gobbling off and using phrases like ‘gone full method’, which I think is meant to imply that a person’s behaving like a lunatic in an extreme fashion,” he told the New York Times. “Everyone tends to focus on superficial details of the work, and those details always seem to involve some sort 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 of Imitators
Frankly, it appears as if the actor has come out from his retreat only to discover shocked by the acting community that has developed mirroring his methods. When you are widely considered one of the greatest performers to ever work, and your approach involves headbutting a dummy until you break your nose (for Gangs of New York) or enduring two days in isolation deprived of sustenance (during In the Name of the Father), then it stands to reason that fellow performers will want to fill that vacuum by imitating their idol.
Essentially, we exist in a landscape populated by half-cocked imitators of Day-Lewis who strive only to show the world the sheer amount of dedication they invest in a character. At the shallow end of the pool there are performers such as Lady Gaga, who was determined to win an Oscar with House of Gucci that she dedicated the entire promotion attempting to persuade people that she became an Italian native over 18 months as preparation.
Then we have Jared Leto, who chose to immerse himself in the character as the Joker (for Suicide Squad) through sending “disturbing” presents to fellow cast members. These, depending on who you ask, included dead pigs and rats to anal beads and used condoms, although the actor refuted the most extreme claims. And then, naturally, there is Jim Carrey, who went so deep into Andy Kaufman for Man on the Moon that filmmakers succeeded to get a full-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 Method Guy currently seems to be Jeremy Strong (once an assistant to Day-Lewis), whose process while filming Succession was so rigorously detailed that it formed the basis of a critical New Yorker profile, including statements from people who were either concerned for his behaviour (“The toll to himself concerns me,” remarked co-star Brian Cox) or annoyed beyond all measure by his actions (“I remember him causing others roll their eyes,” stated an anonymous cast member).
The actor says he ‘did not plan to stop acting, truly’
We have so many other examples. Andrew Garfield abstained from sex over half a year for Silence. Leonardo DiCaprio rested inside an animal carcass during The Revenant. There’s a fighting chance that Austin Butler continues to talk like Elvis Presley, three years after the movie’s release. All of this, in part, aims to evoke the seriousness in which Day-Lewis takes his work.
A Noble Yet Challenging Battle
And, although his rebuttal to critics of the Method could be commendable, a short publicity tour may prove insufficient to alter perceptions, let alone their behaviour. Maybe if he wants to remind people what method acting is, or to demonstrate its potential results, then Day-Lewis’s best bet is to simply begin producing more films. Certainly everyone would support that idea.
