It has been a long while since the public saw or heard from Daniel Day-Lewis. After he announcement in 2017 declaring he would cease to work as an actor, prior to the debut of The Phantom Thread, Day-Lewis quietly faded from view. However, during his hiatus, his reputation expanded further.
The Mythos Surrounding His Acting Method
Primarily, this reputation revolves around his favored style of working. As someone known for disappears into the roles he plays – for instance, while filming Lincoln, he had Steven Spielberg call him “Mr President” for the entire production – audiences has become more fascinated with how he works. Is it true he actually sent texts to Sally Field as Abraham Lincoln? Was it accurate that he only eat animals he’d killed for Last of the Mohicans? And did he demand being spoon-fed for My Left Foot?
Extreme acting methods: have we fallen out of love with over-the-top performances?
Now, Daniel Day-Lewis has returned in the limelight, with some hesitation, for his new film Anemone. And he is taking this chance to express his anger at how the Method technique is viewed. “I am somewhat annoyed these days when I hear all kinds of people gobbling off and using phrases like ‘gone full method’, which I think suggests that a person’s behaving like a lunatic in a drastic way,” he stated to a major publication. “People tends to focus on the less important aspects of acting, and these elements typically include some form of self-flagellation or an experience that causes extreme unease or mental instability. But of course, in the career for a performer, it has to principally be about the internal work.”
A World Full of Followers
To be honest, it appears like the actor has emerged from seclusion and found himself aghast at the acting community that has been created in his image. If you’re regarded as among the best actors in history, and your process involves headbutting a dummy to the point of injury (for Gangs of New York) or spending 48 hours in isolation without food or water (during In the Name of the Father), it’s natural that fellow performers will want to emulate that example by imitating your hero.
In other words, we now live in an environment full of half-cocked Day-Lewis impersonators who want nothing more than to show the world the extensive degree of dedication 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 for House of Gucci that she spent the whole campaign attempting to persuade people that she became functionally Italian over 18 months as preparation.
Then we have Jared Leto, who decided to immerse himself into the role of the Joker (in Suicide Squad) by sending “disturbing” gifts to fellow cast members. These, according to various accounts, range from dead pigs and rats to anal beads and used condoms, although the actor refuted the most extreme claims. Then, naturally, there is Jim Carrey, who immersed himself so fully as Andy Kaufman for Man on the Moon that filmmakers succeeded to get a full-length documentary out of B-roll of him making life as impossible as he could for his colleagues.
Contemporary Followers of the Method
The foremost practitioner of the Method currently seems to be Jeremy Strong (formerly an assistant to Day-Lewis), whose process during Succession was so rigorously detailed that it became the subject of a critical New Yorker profile, full of quotes from people who were worried for his behaviour (“The toll on himself concerns me,” remarked Brian Cox) or extremely irritated by it (“I recall [him] making everyone else roll their eyes,” said an unnamed co-star).
The actor says 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 an animal carcass during The Revenant. There’s a fighting chance that Austin Butler continues to talk in the style of Elvis, three years after that film came out. Each of these instances, in part, is meant to invoke the dedication in which Day-Lewis takes his work.
A Noble Yet Challenging Fight
Moreover, while his fightback against method detractors might be noble, a brief promotional cycle might not be enough to change anyone’s mind, let alone their behaviour. Maybe if he wants to remind people the true essence of the Method, or to demonstrate what it can achieve, then Day-Lewis’s best bet is to simply start making more films. Certainly we could all get behind that.
