It’s been a long while since the public saw or heard from the acclaimed actor Daniel Day-Lewis. Following his announcement in 2017 declaring he would no longer pursue acting, just before the release of The Phantom Thread, Day-Lewis withdrew from the spotlight. However, during his hiatus, his legend expanded further.
The Legend Surrounding His Acting Method
Primarily, this legend revolves around his favored approach to roles. As someone known for immerses himself in the roles he plays – for example, while filming Lincoln, reportedly asked the director call him “Mr. President” for the entire production – audiences has become increasingly obsessed with how he works. Is it true he really send messages to co-star Sally Field as Abraham Lincoln? Did he consumed solely game he hunted during Last of the Mohicans? And did he demand receiving food via spoon for My Left Foot?
Madness in their method: has the public lost interest 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 vocalise his anger regarding how method acting is viewed. “I’m a little cross nowadays when I hear all kinds of people gobbling off and saying things like ‘fully embraced the Method’, which seems is meant to imply that someone is behaving like a lunatic in an extreme fashion,” 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-flagellation or a situation that imposes upon oneself extreme unease or mental instability. However, in the career of an actor, it must mainly focus on the internal work.”
An Industry of Imitators
To be honest, it appears as if Day-Lewis has come out from seclusion only to discover shocked by the acting community that has been created in his image. When you are regarded as one of the greatest performers to ever work, and your process involves headbutting a dummy until you break your nose (for Gangs of New York) or enduring 48 hours in solitary confinement deprived of sustenance (during In the Name of the Father), it’s natural that fellow performers will attempt to fill that vacuum by trying to mimic your hero.
Essentially, we exist in a landscape populated by half-cocked imitators of Day-Lewis who want nothing more than to demonstrate the sheer amount of dedication they put into their roles. On the milder side of this trend we have people like Lady Gaga, who was so desperate to win an Oscar for House of Gucci that she dedicated the entire promotion trying to convince everyone that she transformed into an Italian native for a year and a half in preparation.
Additionally, there is Jared Leto, who decided to immerse himself in the character as the Joker (for Suicide Squad) through sending “horrifying” gifts to his castmates. These items, according to various accounts, range from dead pigs and rats to anal beads and personal hygiene products, though Leto denied the most extreme claims. Then, naturally, we have Jim Carrey, who went so deep as Andy Kaufman for Man on the Moon that filmmakers succeeded to get a feature-length documentary from behind-the-scenes footage of him making life to the utmost for everyone around him.
The Modern Method Practitioners
The foremost Method Guy at the moment would appear to be Jeremy Strong (formerly an assistant to Day-Lewis), whose process while filming Succession was so rigorously detailed that it became the subject of a critical New Yorker profile, full of quotes from people who were worried about his conduct (“The toll to himself that worries me,” remarked Brian Cox) or extremely irritated by his actions (“I remember him causing everyone else roll their eyes,” stated an unnamed co-star).
Daniel Day-Lewis says he ‘never intended to retire, truly’
We have numerous additional cases. Andrew Garfield abstained from sex for six months while preparing for Silence. Leonardo DiCaprio slept in a dead animal during The Revenant. There’s a fighting chance that actor Austin Butler continues to talk in the style of Elvis, three years after that film came out. Each of these instances, in part, is meant to invoke the seriousness with which Day-Lewis approaches his work.
A Noble But Uphill Fight
And, although his rebuttal to critics of the Method might be noble, a brief promotional cycle may prove insufficient to change anyone’s mind, not to mention their behaviour. Maybe if he wants to make audiences recall what method acting is, or to show them what it can achieve, then Day-Lewis’s best bet is to simply begin producing additional movies. Certainly everyone would support that idea.
