It has been quite some time since the public saw or heard from the acclaimed actor Daniel Day-Lewis. After he announcement in 2017 that he would no longer pursue acting, just before the debut of Phantom Thread, the actor withdrew from the spotlight. However, during his hiatus, his reputation expanded further.
The Mythos Surrounding His Acting Method
Largely, this reputation revolves around his preferred style of working. Being an actor who famously disappears into the roles he plays – for example, during Lincoln, reportedly asked Steven Spielberg address him as “Mr. President” throughout the shoot – audiences has grown increasingly obsessed with how he works. Did he actually sent texts to Sally Field in character as Lincoln? Did he consumed solely animals he’d killed during The Last of the Mohicans? And did he insist on receiving food via spoon while filming My Left Foot?
Extreme acting methods: have we lost interest with over-the-top performances?
Currently, Day-Lewis has returned in the limelight, somewhat reluctantly, promoting his latest movie Anemone. And he is taking this chance to vocalise his frustration regarding how method acting is perceived. “I’m a little cross nowadays when I hear all kinds of people gobbling off and using phrases like ‘fully embraced the Method’, which I think is meant to imply that someone is behaving like a lunatic in an extreme fashion,” he stated to the New York Times. “People tends to focus on superficial details of the work, and those details always seem to involve some sort of self-punishment or an experience that imposes upon oneself extreme unease or mental instability. However, in the career of an actor, it must mainly focus on the inner transformation.”
A World Full of Followers
Frankly, this sounds as if the actor has come out from seclusion only to discover aghast at the acting community that has been created in his image. When you are widely considered among the best actors to ever work, and your process involves headbutting a dummy until you break your nose (in 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 want to emulate that example by trying to mimic their idol.
Essentially, we exist in an environment full of imperfect imitators of Day-Lewis who want nothing more than to demonstrate the sheer amount of dedication they invest in a character. At the shallow end of the pool we have people like 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 functionally Italian over 18 months as preparation.
Additionally, there is Jared Leto, who chose to immerse himself into the role of the Joker (for Suicide Squad) by sending “disturbing” gifts to his castmates. These, depending on who you ask, included dead pigs and rats to intimate objects and personal hygiene products, though Leto denied the most extreme claims. And then, naturally, we have Jim Carrey, who immersed himself so fully into Andy Kaufman during Man on the Moon that filmmakers succeeded to get a full-length documentary from behind-the-scenes footage of him causing difficulties to the utmost for his colleagues.
Contemporary Followers of the Method
The main 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 became the subject of a critical New Yorker profile, including statements from people who were either concerned about his conduct (“The toll to himself concerns me,” remarked Brian Cox) or annoyed beyond all measure by it (“I remember [him] making everyone else roll their eyes,” said an anonymous cast member).
Daniel Day-Lewis claims he ‘never intended to retire, really’
There are so many other examples. Andrew Garfield abstained from sex for six months while preparing for Silence. Leonardo DiCaprio rested inside a dead animal for The Revenant. There’s a fighting chance that Austin Butler continues to talk in the style of Elvis, three years after that film came out. All of this, in part, aims to evoke the seriousness in which Day-Lewis approaches his work.
An Admirable Yet Challenging Battle
And, although his rebuttal to critics of the Method could be commendable, a brief promotional cycle may prove insufficient to change anyone’s mind, let alone their practices. Maybe if he wants to make audiences recall the true essence of the Method, or to show them its potential results, then the optimal strategy for Day-Lewis is to just start making additional movies. Surely everyone would get behind that.
