It has been a long while since the public caught a glimpse of the acclaimed actor Daniel Day-Lewis. After he announcement in 2017 declaring he would cease to work as an actor, just before the debut of The Phantom Thread, Day-Lewis quietly faded from view. Yet, during his hiatus, his reputation has only grown.
The Mythos of His Acting Method
Largely, this legend revolves around his favored style of working. Being an actor who famously disappears into the roles he plays – for example, while filming the Lincoln biopic, reportedly asked the director address him as “Mr. President” for the entire production – audiences has grown more fascinated with his process. Did he actually sent messages to co-star Sally Field as Abraham Lincoln? Did he only eat game he hunted during Last of the Mohicans? And did he insist on receiving food via spoon for My Left Foot?
Extreme acting methods: have we fallen out of love with actorly excess?
Currently, Daniel Day-Lewis has returned to public attention, with some hesitation, promoting his latest movie Anemone. And he is using this to vocalise his anger regarding how the Method technique is perceived. “I’m a little cross these days to hear all kinds of people gobbling off and saying things like ‘gone full method’, which I think is meant to imply that someone is behaving like a lunatic in a drastic way,” he stated to a major publication. “Everyone tends to focus on superficial details of the work, and those details always seem to involve some form of self-flagellation or a situation that causes a severe discomfort or mental instability. However, in the career of an actor, it has to principally be about the inner transformation.”
A World Full of Followers
Frankly, this sounds as if Day-Lewis has come out from his retreat and found himself shocked by the acting community that has been created mirroring his methods. When you are regarded as one of the greatest performers in history, and your process includes headbutting a dummy until you break your nose (in Gangs of New York) or spending 48 hours in solitary confinement without food or water (during In the Name of the Father), then it stands to reason that other actors will attempt to fill that vacuum by imitating your hero.
In other words, we now live in a landscape full of imperfect Day-Lewis impersonators who want nothing more than to demonstrate the extensive degree of effort they put into their roles. On the milder side of this trend there are performers such as Lady Gaga, who was so desperate to earn an Academy Award with House of Gucci that she dedicated the entire promotion trying to convince everyone that she became an Italian native over 18 months in preparation.
Then we have Jared Leto, who chose to deeply embed himself into the role of the Joker (for Suicide Squad) through sending “horrifying” gifts to fellow cast members. These items, depending on who you ask, included dead pigs and rats to intimate objects and used condoms, although Leto denied the most extreme claims. Then, naturally, there is Jim Carrey, who immersed himself so fully into Andy Kaufman for Man on the Moon that filmmakers literally managed to get a full-length documentary from behind-the-scenes footage of him making life as impossible as he could for everyone around him.
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 laboriously intensive that it became the subject of a critical magazine feature, including statements from individuals who were worried about his conduct (“The toll to himself concerns me,” said co-star Brian Cox) or extremely irritated by his actions (“I remember him causing others to react with exasperation,” stated an unnamed co-star).
Daniel Day-Lewis says he ‘did not plan to stop acting, truly’
There are so many other examples. Andrew Garfield went celibate for six months for Silence. Leonardo DiCaprio rested inside a dead animal for The Revenant. There’s a fighting chance that Austin Butler still speaks like Elvis Presley, years following the movie’s release. All of this, in part, aims to evoke the dedication with which Day-Lewis takes his craft.
A Noble But Uphill Fight
And, while his fightback against method detractors might be noble, a brief promotional cycle may prove insufficient to alter perceptions, not to mention their behaviour. Maybe if he wants to remind people the true essence of the Method, or to show them its potential results, then Day-Lewis’s best bet is to just begin producing more films. Certainly we could all get behind that.
