It has been quite some time since anyone caught a glimpse of the acclaimed actor Daniel Day-Lewis. After he announcement in 2017 declaring he would cease to work as an actor, prior to the debut of Phantom Thread, the actor quietly faded from view. However, during his hiatus, his legend expanded further.
The Mythos of His Acting Method
Largely, this legend centers on his favored approach to roles. Being an actor who famously disappears into the roles he plays – 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. Is it true he actually sent texts to Sally Field as Abraham Lincoln? Was it accurate that he consumed solely animals he’d killed for The Last of the Mohicans? And did he demand receiving food via spoon while filming My Left Foot?
Extreme acting methods: has the public lost interest with over-the-top performances?
Now, Day-Lewis is back to public attention, somewhat reluctantly, promoting his latest movie Anemone. He is taking this chance to vocalise his frustration at how method acting is viewed. “I’m a little cross these days when I hear all kinds of people talking carelessly and using phrases like ‘gone full method’, which I think suggests that a person’s behaving like a lunatic in a drastic way,” he told the New York Times. “People tends to focus on the less important details of the work, and those details typically include some form of self-punishment or a situation that imposes upon oneself extreme unease or mental instability. But of course, in the life for a performer, it must mainly focus on the internal work.”
An Industry Full of Followers
Frankly, this sounds as if Day-Lewis has come out from seclusion only to discover aghast at the acting community that has developed mirroring his methods. If you’re regarded as among the best performers in history, and your process includes headbutting a dummy to the point of injury (in Gangs of New York) or enduring 48 hours in solitary confinement without food or water (for In the Name of the Father), then it stands to reason that fellow performers will want to emulate that example by imitating their idol.
In other words, we exist in an environment populated by imperfect Day-Lewis impersonators who strive only to demonstrate the extensive degree of dedication they invest in a character. On the milder side of the pool we have people like Lady Gaga, who was so desperate to win an Oscar for House of Gucci that she dedicated the whole campaign trying to convince everyone that she became functionally Italian for a year and a half in preparation.
Additionally, there is Jared Leto, who chose to immerse himself in the character of the Joker (for Suicide Squad) through sending “disturbing” gifts to his castmates. These, depending on who you ask, included dead pigs and rats to intimate objects and personal hygiene products, although Leto denied those worst excesses. Then, naturally, we have Jim Carrey, who immersed himself so fully into Andy Kaufman for Man on the Moon that filmmakers literally managed 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 Followers of the Method
The foremost practitioner of the Method currently would appear to be Jeremy Strong (once Day-Lewis’s assistant), whose process while filming Succession was so laboriously intensive that it became the basis of a critical magazine feature, full of quotes from people who were worried about his conduct (“The toll to himself that worries me,” said Brian Cox) or extremely irritated by it (“I recall him causing everyone else to react with exasperation,” stated an anonymous cast member).
The actor says he ‘did not plan to retire, really’
We have so many other examples. Andrew Garfield abstained from sex for six months for Silence. Leonardo DiCaprio rested inside an animal carcass for The Revenant. It’s quite possible that actor Austin Butler still speaks in the style of Elvis, three years after that film came out. Each of these instances, to some extent, is meant to invoke the dedication in which Day-Lewis takes his craft.
An Admirable Yet Challenging Fight
And, although his rebuttal to critics of the Method might be noble, a brief promotional cycle might not be enough to alter perceptions, let alone their practices. Perhaps if he wants to remind people what method acting is, or to show them its potential results, then the optimal strategy for Day-Lewis is to simply start making more films. Surely everyone would get behind that.
