It has been a long while since anyone caught a glimpse of the acclaimed actor Daniel Day-Lewis. After he statement in 2017 declaring he would cease to pursue acting, just before the debut of The Phantom Thread, the actor withdrew from the spotlight. However, during his hiatus, his reputation expanded further.
The Legend of His Acting Method
Largely, this legend revolves around his preferred approach to roles. Being an actor known for disappears into the roles he plays – for example, while filming the Lincoln biopic, he had the director address him as “Mr. President” for the entire production – audiences has become more fascinated with how he works. Did he really send messages to co-star Sally Field as Abraham Lincoln? Was it accurate that he only eat game he hunted for The Last of the Mohicans? And did he insist on being spoon-fed for My Left Foot?
Extreme acting methods: have we fallen out of love with actorly excess?
Currently, Daniel Day-Lewis has returned in the limelight, somewhat reluctantly, promoting his latest movie Anemone. He is taking this chance to vocalise his frustration at how the Method technique is viewed. “I’m a little cross these days to hear all kinds of people talking carelessly and saying things like ‘fully embraced the Method’, which I think is meant to imply that a person’s behaving like a lunatic in a drastic way,” he told a major publication. “People often concentrate on superficial details of the work, and those details always seem to involve some sort of self-punishment or a situation that causes extreme unease or mental instability. However, in the life of an actor, it must principally be about the internal work.”
A World Full of Followers
To be honest, it appears as if the actor has come out from his retreat and found himself shocked by the acting community that has been created in his image. If you’re regarded as one of the greatest actors in history, and your process includes striking a prop to the point of injury (in Gangs of New York) or spending 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 trying to mimic their idol.
In other words, we exist in an environment populated by imperfect imitators of Day-Lewis who strive only to show the world the sheer amount of dedication they put into their roles. At the shallow end of the pool there are performers such as 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 an Italian native over 18 months as preparation.
Then we have Jared Leto, who decided to deeply embed himself in the character of the Joker (for Suicide Squad) through sending “horrifying” presents to his castmates. These, depending on who you ask, range from dead pigs and rats to intimate objects and used condoms, though Leto denied the most extreme claims. And then, naturally, there is Jim Carrey, who went so deep as Andy Kaufman during Man on the Moon that filmmakers succeeded to get a full-length documentary from behind-the-scenes footage of him making life as impossible as he could for his colleagues.
Contemporary Followers of the Method
The main practitioner of the Method currently seems to be Jeremy Strong (once Day-Lewis’s assistant), whose process during Succession was so rigorously detailed that it became the basis of a derisive magazine feature, full of quotes from people who were either concerned about his conduct (“It’s the cost to himself that worries me,” remarked co-star Brian Cox) or extremely irritated by his actions (“I recall [him] making everyone else roll their eyes,” stated an anonymous cast member).
Daniel Day-Lewis says he ‘did not plan to stop acting, really’
We have so many other examples. Andrew Garfield went celibate over half a year for Silence. Leonardo DiCaprio rested inside a dead animal during The Revenant. It’s quite possible that actor Austin Butler continues to talk in the style of Elvis, years following that film came out. All of this, in part, aims to evoke the dedication in which Day-Lewis approaches his work.
A Noble Yet Challenging Battle
And, while his fightback against method detractors might be noble, a short publicity tour may prove insufficient to change anyone’s mind, let alone their practices. Maybe if he wishes to make audiences recall what method acting is, or to demonstrate what it can achieve, then Day-Lewis’s best bet is to just start making more films. Certainly we could all support that idea.
