It has been quite some time since anyone caught a glimpse of the acclaimed actor Daniel Day-Lewis. After he announcement in 2017 that he would cease to work as an actor, just before the release of Phantom Thread, Day-Lewis withdrew from the spotlight. However, in his absence, his legend expanded further.
The Mythos Surrounding His Method
Primarily, this legend centers on his favored approach to roles. Being an actor who famously immerses himself in his characters – for example, while filming Lincoln, he had Steven Spielberg address him as “Mr President” throughout the shoot – audiences has become increasingly obsessed with how he works. Did he actually sent texts to Sally Field in character as Lincoln? Did he only eat animals he’d killed during Last of the Mohicans? And did he demand being spoon-fed for My Left Foot?
Madness in their method: have we fallen out of love with over-the-top performances?
Now, Day-Lewis has returned in the limelight, with some hesitation, promoting his latest movie Anemone. And he is taking this chance to express his frustration regarding how the Method technique is perceived. “I’m a little cross nowadays when I hear various individuals gobbling off and using phrases like ‘fully embraced the Method’, which I think suggests that someone is acting insane in a drastic way,” he told a major publication. “People often concentrate on the less important details of the work, and those details typically include some form of self-flagellation or a situation that imposes upon oneself extreme unease or mental instability. However, in the career of an actor, it must mainly focus on the inner transformation.”
A World Full of Followers
Frankly, it appears as if Day-Lewis has come out from his retreat only to discover shocked by the acting community that has developed mirroring his methods. When you are widely considered one of the greatest actors in history, and your approach involves striking a prop to the point of injury (for Gangs of New York) or enduring 48 hours in solitary confinement without food or water (during 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 now live in a landscape populated by half-cocked Day-Lewis impersonators who want nothing more than to demonstrate the extensive degree of dedication they invest in their roles. At the shallow end of the pool we have people like Lady Gaga, who was determined to earn an Academy Award 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.
Then we have Jared Leto, who chose to immerse himself in the character of the Joker (for Suicide Squad) through sending “disturbing” presents to his castmates. These items, according to various accounts, included dead pigs and rats to intimate objects and used condoms, although Leto denied those worst excesses. And then, of course, we have Jim Carrey, who immersed himself so fully as Andy Kaufman during Man on the Moon that filmmakers literally managed to get a feature-length documentary out of B-roll of him making life as impossible as he could for everyone around him.
Contemporary Method Practitioners
The main practitioner of the Method currently seems to be Jeremy Strong (once an assistant to Day-Lewis), whose process during Succession was so laboriously intensive that it became the basis of a derisive New Yorker profile, full of quotes from individuals who were either concerned for his behaviour (“The toll to himself concerns me,” said Brian Cox) or extremely irritated by his actions (“I recall [him] making others roll their eyes,” stated an anonymous cast member).
The actor says he ‘never intended to retire, really’
There are so many other examples. Andrew Garfield abstained from sex over half a year for Silence. Leonardo DiCaprio slept in an animal carcass during The Revenant. It’s quite possible that Austin Butler still speaks in the style of Elvis, three years after the movie’s release. Each of these instances, to some extent, is meant to invoke the dedication with which Day-Lewis takes his work.
An Admirable Yet Challenging Fight
Moreover, while his fightback against method detractors could be commendable, a brief promotional cycle may prove insufficient to change anyone’s mind, not to mention their practices. Perhaps if he wishes to make audiences recall the true essence of the Method, or to demonstrate what it can achieve, then Day-Lewis’s best bet is to just start making more films. Surely everyone would support that idea.
