It has been a long while since the public saw or heard from Daniel Day-Lewis. After he announcement in 2017 that he would no longer work as an actor, just before the debut of The Phantom Thread, Day-Lewis quietly faded from view. However, during his hiatus, his reputation expanded further.
The Legend Surrounding His Method
Largely, this reputation revolves around his favored style of working. Being an actor known for disappears into the roles he plays – for example, during the Lincoln biopic, he had the director address him as “Mr. President” throughout the shoot – the world has grown increasingly obsessed with his process. Did he really send messages to co-star Sally Field in character as Lincoln? Was it accurate that he consumed solely animals he’d killed during Last of the Mohicans? And did he demand being spoon-fed while filming My Left Foot?
Extreme acting methods: have we fallen out of love with over-the-top performances?
Currently, Daniel Day-Lewis has returned in the limelight, with some hesitation, promoting his latest movie Anemone. And he is using this to vocalise his anger at how the Method technique is perceived. “I’m a little cross these days when I hear various individuals gobbling off and saying things like ‘gone full method’, which seems is meant to imply that someone is behaving like a lunatic in a drastic way,” 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-flagellation or an experience that causes extreme unease or mental instability. However, in the career of an actor, it must mainly focus on the inner transformation.”
A World of Imitators
To be honest, this sounds as if Day-Lewis has emerged from seclusion only to discover shocked by the world that has been created in his image. When you are regarded as among the best performers to ever work, and your process involves headbutting a dummy until you break your nose (for 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 other actors will want to fill that vacuum by trying to mimic their idol.
In other words, we now live in a landscape populated by half-cocked Day-Lewis impersonators who want nothing more than to demonstrate the sheer amount of effort they invest in a character. At the shallow end of this trend we have people like Lady Gaga, who was so desperate to win an Oscar with House of Gucci that she spent the entire promotion trying to convince everyone that she became functionally Italian for a year and a half as preparation.
Additionally, there is Jared Leto, who decided to deeply embed himself into the role as the Joker (for Suicide Squad) through sending “disturbing” presents to his castmates. These items, depending on who you ask, range from dead pigs and rats to anal beads and personal hygiene products, though Leto denied those worst excesses. Then, naturally, we have Jim Carrey, who went so deep into Andy Kaufman during Man on the Moon that filmmakers literally managed to get a full-length documentary out of B-roll of him causing difficulties as impossible as he could for his colleagues.
The Modern Followers of the Method
The main practitioner of the Method at the moment would appear to be Jeremy Strong (once Day-Lewis’s assistant), whose approach during Succession was so laboriously intensive that it became the subject of a derisive magazine feature, full of quotes from people who were worried about his conduct (“The toll on himself that worries me,” remarked Brian Cox) or annoyed beyond all measure by it (“I remember him causing everyone else roll their eyes,” stated an unnamed co-star).
The actor says he ‘never intended to retire, truly’
We have numerous additional cases. Andrew Garfield went celibate over half a year while preparing for Silence. Leonardo DiCaprio rested inside an animal carcass during 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, is meant to invoke the dedication in which Day-Lewis approaches his work.
An Admirable But Uphill Fight
Moreover, while his fightback against method detractors could be commendable, a short publicity tour may prove insufficient to alter perceptions, not to mention their practices. Perhaps if he wants to make audiences recall the true essence of the Method, or to show them what it can achieve, then the optimal strategy for Day-Lewis is to simply begin producing additional movies. Certainly everyone would get behind that.
