It has been a long while since the public saw or heard from the acclaimed actor Daniel Day-Lewis. Following his statement in 2017 that he would no longer work as an actor, just before the release of The Phantom Thread, Day-Lewis withdrew from the spotlight. However, during his hiatus, his legend has only grown.
The Mythos Surrounding His Acting Method
Largely, this reputation centers on his preferred approach to roles. As someone known for immerses himself in his characters – for instance, during the Lincoln biopic, reportedly asked the director address him as “Mr President” throughout the shoot – audiences has grown increasingly obsessed with his process. Did he actually sent messages to co-star Sally Field as Abraham Lincoln? Did he only eat game he hunted for The Last of the Mohicans? Did he insist on receiving food via spoon while filming My Left Foot?
Madness in their method: have we lost interest with over-the-top performances?
Currently, Daniel Day-Lewis has returned in the limelight, somewhat reluctantly, promoting his latest movie Anemone. He is taking this chance to express his anger at how the Method technique is viewed. “I’m a little cross nowadays when I hear various individuals 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 the New York Times. “Everyone tends to focus on the less important details of the work, and these elements always seem to involve some sort of self-punishment or an experience that imposes upon oneself extreme unease or psychological strain. However, in the career of an actor, it has to mainly focus on the internal work.”
A World of Imitators
To be honest, this sounds like Day-Lewis has come out from his retreat and found himself shocked by the world that has developed in his image. If you’re regarded as one of the greatest actors to ever work, and your approach involves headbutting a dummy to the point of injury (in Gangs of New York) or enduring 48 hours in solitary confinement deprived of sustenance (for In the Name of the Father), then it stands to reason that other actors will attempt to fill that vacuum by trying to mimic your hero.
In other words, we now live in a landscape populated by half-cocked Day-Lewis impersonators who strive only to demonstrate the sheer amount of effort they invest in a character. On the milder side of the pool there are performers such as Lady Gaga, who was determined to win an Oscar for House of Gucci that she spent the whole campaign attempting to persuade people that she became an Italian native over 18 months in 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 his castmates. These items, depending on who you ask, included dead pigs and rats to anal beads and personal hygiene products, though Leto denied those worst excesses. Then, naturally, there is Jim Carrey, who immersed himself so fully into Andy Kaufman for Man on the Moon that filmmakers succeeded to get a feature-length documentary from behind-the-scenes footage of him causing difficulties as impossible as he could for everyone around him.
Contemporary Method Practitioners
The foremost practitioner of the Method currently seems to be Jeremy Strong (formerly an assistant to Day-Lewis), whose approach during Succession was so rigorously detailed that it formed the subject of a derisive magazine feature, full of quotes from individuals who were either concerned about his conduct (“The toll on himself that worries me,” remarked co-star Brian Cox) or extremely irritated by it (“I remember [him] making others to react with exasperation,” stated an unnamed co-star).
Daniel Day-Lewis claims he ‘did not plan to retire, truly’
There are numerous additional cases. Andrew Garfield went celibate for six months for Silence. Leonardo DiCaprio slept in a dead animal for The Revenant. There’s a fighting chance that actor Austin Butler still speaks in the style of Elvis, years following the movie’s release. All of this, in part, aims to evoke the seriousness in which Day-Lewis approaches his work.
An Admirable But Uphill Battle
And, although his rebuttal to critics of the Method might be noble, a brief promotional cycle may prove insufficient to change anyone’s mind, let alone their practices. Perhaps if he wishes to make audiences recall the true essence of the Method, or to demonstrate what it can achieve, then the optimal strategy for Day-Lewis is to simply begin producing additional movies. Surely we could all support that idea.
