It has been a long while since anyone saw or heard from Daniel Day-Lewis. After he announcement in 2017 that he would cease to pursue acting, just before the release of The Phantom Thread, the actor quietly faded from view. Yet, during his hiatus, his reputation expanded further.
The Mythos Surrounding His Method
Largely, this reputation centers on his preferred style of working. As someone who famously immerses himself in the roles he plays – for instance, during Lincoln, he had the director call him “Mr. President” for the entire production – audiences has grown more fascinated with how he works. Did he actually sent messages to co-star Sally Field as Abraham Lincoln? Did he consumed solely animals he’d killed for Last of the Mohicans? Did he demand receiving food via spoon while filming My Left Foot?
Extreme acting methods: has the public lost interest with over-the-top performances?
Currently, Daniel Day-Lewis is back to public attention, somewhat reluctantly, promoting his latest movie Anemone. And he is taking this chance to express his frustration regarding how method acting is perceived. “I’m a little cross nowadays when I hear various individuals talking carelessly and saying things like ‘fully embraced the Method’, which I think is meant to imply that someone is acting insane in a drastic way,” he stated to a major publication. “People tends to focus on the less important details of the work, and these elements always seem to involve some sort of self-flagellation or an experience that imposes upon oneself a severe discomfort or mental instability. However, in the life for a performer, it has to principally be about the internal work.”
A World Full of Followers
To be honest, this sounds as if Day-Lewis has come out 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 performers to ever work, and your process includes headbutting a dummy to the point of injury (in Gangs of New York) or enduring two days in isolation deprived of sustenance (during In the Name of the Father), it’s natural that fellow performers will want to fill that vacuum by imitating their idol.
In other words, we now live in a landscape full of half-cocked Day-Lewis impersonators who want nothing more than to demonstrate the sheer amount of dedication they invest in their roles. At the shallow end 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 entire promotion attempting to persuade people that she became functionally Italian for a year and a half as preparation.
Additionally, there is Jared Leto, who chose to deeply embed himself in the character as the Joker (in Suicide Squad) through sending “horrifying” presents to fellow cast members. These, according to various accounts, included dead pigs and rats to anal beads and personal hygiene products, though Leto denied those worst excesses. And then, of course, we have Jim Carrey, who went so deep into Andy Kaufman during Man on the Moon that they literally managed in creating 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 formed the subject of a critical New Yorker profile, full of quotes from people who were worried about his conduct (“It’s the cost on himself concerns me,” said co-star Brian Cox) or extremely irritated by it (“I recall [him] making others roll their eyes,” stated an unnamed co-star).
Daniel Day-Lewis claims he ‘never intended to stop acting, really’
There are numerous additional cases. Andrew Garfield abstained from sex for six months while preparing for Silence. Leonardo DiCaprio rested inside an animal carcass for The Revenant. There’s a fighting chance that Austin Butler continues to talk like Elvis Presley, three years after that film came out. Each of these instances, to some extent, is meant to invoke the seriousness with which Day-Lewis approaches his work.
An Admirable Yet Challenging Fight
And, although his rebuttal against method detractors might be noble, a brief promotional cycle might not be enough to change anyone’s mind, let alone their practices. Perhaps if he wishes to make audiences recall what method acting is, or to demonstrate its potential results, then the optimal strategy for Day-Lewis is to simply start making more films. Certainly we could all support that idea.
