It has been a long while since anyone saw or heard from the acclaimed actor Daniel Day-Lewis. Following his announcement in 2017 declaring he would no longer work as an actor, prior to the debut of Phantom Thread, Day-Lewis quietly faded from view. Yet, during his hiatus, his reputation expanded further.
The Legend of His Acting Method
Primarily, this legend revolves around his favored style of working. As someone known for disappears into his characters – for instance, during the Lincoln biopic, he had the director call him “Mr President” throughout the shoot – audiences has become more fascinated with how he works. Did he really send messages to co-star Sally Field as Abraham Lincoln? Did he only eat animals he’d killed during The Last of the Mohicans? And did he insist on receiving food via spoon while filming My Left Foot?
Madness in their method: have we fallen out of love with over-the-top performances?
Now, Daniel Day-Lewis is back to public attention, with some hesitation, for his new film Anemone. He is using this to vocalise his frustration at how method acting is viewed. “I’m a little cross nowadays to hear all kinds of people gobbling off and saying things like ‘gone full method’, which I think is meant to imply that a person’s acting insane in an extreme fashion,” he stated to the New York Times. “People tends to focus on superficial details of the work, and those details typically include some sort of self-flagellation or an experience that imposes upon oneself a severe discomfort or psychological strain. However, in the life for a performer, it has to principally be about the internal work.”
An Industry of Imitators
To be honest, this sounds as if Day-Lewis has emerged from seclusion only to discover aghast at the acting community that has been created mirroring his methods. When you are regarded as one of the greatest performers to ever work, and your process includes striking a prop until you break your nose (in Gangs of New York) or spending 48 hours in isolation deprived of sustenance (for In the Name of the Father), then it stands to reason that other actors will attempt to emulate that example by imitating their idol.
In other words, we exist in an environment full of half-cocked imitators of Day-Lewis who want nothing more than to demonstrate the sheer amount of effort they invest in a character. On the milder side of this trend there are performers such as Lady Gaga, who was determined to earn an Academy Award with House of Gucci that she dedicated the whole campaign trying to convince everyone that she became an Italian native for a year and a half in preparation.
Then we have Jared Leto, who decided to immerse himself in the character as the Joker (for Suicide Squad) by sending “disturbing” presents to his castmates. These, according to various accounts, included deceased animals to anal beads and used condoms, although Leto denied the most extreme claims. And then, of course, we have Jim Carrey, who went so deep as Andy Kaufman during 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 everyone around him.
The Modern Method Practitioners
The foremost practitioner of the Method currently would appear to be Jeremy Strong (formerly Day-Lewis’s assistant), whose approach during Succession was so rigorously detailed that it formed the subject of a critical magazine feature, full of quotes from people who were either concerned about his conduct (“It’s the cost on himself concerns me,” remarked Brian Cox) or annoyed beyond all measure by his actions (“I recall [him] making everyone else to react with exasperation,” stated an anonymous cast member).
Daniel Day-Lewis says he ‘did not plan to stop acting, truly’
We have numerous additional cases. Andrew Garfield went celibate for six months for Silence. Leonardo DiCaprio rested inside a dead animal during The Revenant. It’s quite possible that Austin Butler still speaks like Elvis Presley, years following the movie’s release. Each of these instances, in part, aims to evoke the seriousness in which Day-Lewis takes his craft.
An Admirable But Uphill Battle
And, although his rebuttal against method detractors might be noble, a short publicity tour might not be enough to alter perceptions, let alone their practices. Perhaps if he wants to make audiences recall what method acting is, or to show them what it can achieve, then Day-Lewis’s best bet is to just start making more films. Certainly everyone would support that idea.
