It has been a long while since anyone caught a glimpse of Daniel Day-Lewis. Following his statement in 2017 that he would no longer pursue acting, prior to the debut of Phantom Thread, Day-Lewis quietly faded from view. Yet, during his hiatus, his legend expanded further.
The Legend of His Acting Method
Largely, this reputation revolves around his favored approach to roles. Being an actor known for immerses himself in the roles he plays – for instance, during Lincoln, he had the director call him “Mr. President” throughout the shoot – audiences has become more fascinated with his process. Did he actually sent texts to Sally Field in character as Lincoln? Was it accurate that he consumed solely game he hunted during Last of the Mohicans? Did he insist on receiving food via spoon for My Left Foot?
Madness in their method: has the public lost interest with over-the-top performances?
Now, Daniel Day-Lewis is back to public attention, with some hesitation, promoting his latest movie Anemone. He is taking this chance to express his anger at how the Method technique is perceived. “I’m a little cross nowadays when I hear various individuals gobbling off and saying things like ‘fully embraced the Method’, which seems suggests that a person’s acting insane in a drastic way,” he stated to the New York Times. “Everyone tends to focus on superficial aspects of acting, and these elements always seem to involve some sort of self-punishment or an experience that causes extreme unease or mental instability. However, in the career for a performer, it has to mainly focus on the internal work.”
A World of Imitators
To be honest, this sounds as if Day-Lewis has come out from seclusion only to discover shocked by the acting community that has developed mirroring his methods. When you are regarded as among the best performers to ever work, and your process includes headbutting a dummy to the point of injury (in Gangs of New York) or spending 48 hours in isolation deprived of sustenance (for In the Name of the Father), it’s natural that other actors will want to fill that vacuum by trying to mimic their idol.
In other words, we exist in a landscape populated by imperfect imitators of Day-Lewis who strive only to demonstrate the sheer amount of dedication they invest in a character. On the milder side of this trend there are performers such as Lady Gaga, who was so desperate to win an Oscar for House of Gucci that she spent the whole campaign trying to convince everyone that she became an Italian native for a year and a half as preparation.
Then we have Jared Leto, who chose to immerse himself in the character as the Joker (for Suicide Squad) through sending “disturbing” gifts to fellow cast members. These, depending on who you ask, included deceased animals to intimate objects and personal hygiene products, though Leto denied those worst excesses. And then, of course, there is Jim Carrey, who went so deep as Andy Kaufman during Man on the Moon that they succeeded to get a full-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 process during Succession was so laboriously intensive that it became the subject of a critical magazine feature, including statements from individuals who were worried for his behaviour (“The toll on himself that worries me,” said co-star Brian Cox) or extremely irritated by it (“I remember [him] making others to react with exasperation,” said an anonymous cast member).
The actor claims he ‘did not plan to stop acting, truly’
We have so many other examples. Andrew Garfield went celibate over half a year for Silence. Leonardo DiCaprio rested inside a dead animal for The Revenant. There’s a fighting chance that Austin Butler still speaks in the style of Elvis, three years after that film came out. Each of these instances, to some extent, is meant to invoke the seriousness in which Day-Lewis takes his craft.
An Admirable Yet Challenging Battle
Moreover, although his rebuttal to critics of the Method could be commendable, a short publicity tour might not be enough to alter perceptions, let alone their behaviour. Maybe if he wants to remind people what method acting is, or to demonstrate what it can achieve, then Day-Lewis’s best bet is to simply start making more films. Surely everyone would get behind that.
