It has been quite some time since the public saw or heard from Daniel Day-Lewis. Following his announcement in 2017 declaring he would no longer work as an actor, just before the debut of Phantom Thread, Day-Lewis quietly faded from view. Yet, during his hiatus, his reputation expanded further.
The Legend Surrounding His Acting Method
Largely, this reputation centers on his preferred style of working. As someone known for disappears into his characters – for instance, during Lincoln, he had the director address him as “Mr. President” for the entire production – audiences has grown more fascinated with his process. Is it true he really send messages to co-star Sally Field as Abraham Lincoln? Did he consumed solely animals he’d killed for Last of the Mohicans? And did he insist on receiving food via spoon for My Left Foot?
Extreme acting methods: has the public fallen out of love with actorly excess?
Currently, Daniel Day-Lewis is back to public attention, somewhat reluctantly, promoting his latest movie Anemone. And he is using this to express his anger at how the Method technique is perceived. “I’m a little cross nowadays to hear all kinds of people gobbling off and using phrases like ‘fully embraced the Method’, which I think suggests that someone is behaving like a lunatic in an extreme fashion,” he stated to a major publication. “Everyone tends to focus on superficial aspects of acting, and those details always seem to involve some sort of self-flagellation or a situation that causes a severe discomfort or psychological strain. But of course, in the life for a performer, it must principally be about the internal work.”
A World of Imitators
To be honest, this sounds as if the actor has emerged from seclusion only to discover shocked by the world that has been created in his image. When you are regarded as among the best actors in history, and your process involves headbutting a dummy until you break your nose (in Gangs of New York) or enduring 48 hours in solitary confinement without food or water (during In the Name of the Father), it’s natural that other actors will attempt to fill that vacuum by trying to mimic your hero.
Essentially, we exist in an environment populated by half-cocked Day-Lewis impersonators who strive only to show the world the extensive degree of dedication they put into their roles. At the shallow end of this trend there are performers such as Lady Gaga, who was determined to earn an Academy Award with House of Gucci that she spent 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 decided to immerse himself in the character as the Joker (in Suicide Squad) by sending “horrifying” gifts to fellow cast members. These, depending on who you ask, included deceased animals to intimate objects and used condoms, though Leto denied those worst excesses. And then, of course, we have Jim Carrey, who immersed himself so fully as Andy Kaufman for Man on the Moon that filmmakers succeeded to get a feature-length documentary out of B-roll of him causing difficulties as impossible as he could for everyone around him.
Contemporary Followers of the Method
The foremost practitioner of the Method currently would appear to be Jeremy Strong (formerly Day-Lewis’s assistant), whose process while filming Succession was so laboriously intensive that it formed the subject of a derisive New Yorker profile, full of quotes from people who were worried for his behaviour (“It’s the cost to himself that worries me,” said co-star Brian Cox) or annoyed beyond all measure by his actions (“I remember him causing others to react with exasperation,” stated an anonymous cast member).
The actor claims he ‘did not plan to retire, truly’
We have numerous additional cases. Andrew Garfield went celibate 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 still speaks in the style of Elvis, three years after that film came out. All of this, to some extent, is meant to invoke the seriousness in which Day-Lewis takes his craft.
An Admirable But Uphill Fight
And, although his rebuttal to critics of the Method might be noble, a brief promotional cycle might not be enough to change anyone’s mind, let alone their practices. Perhaps if he wants to make audiences recall what method acting is, or to show them its potential results, then the optimal strategy for Day-Lewis is to just begin producing more films. Certainly we could all get behind that.
