It’s been quite some time since anyone caught a glimpse of Daniel Day-Lewis. Following his announcement in 2017 declaring he would no longer pursue acting, just before the release of The Phantom Thread, Day-Lewis withdrew from the spotlight. However, in his absence, his legend has only grown.
The Mythos Surrounding His Acting Method
Largely, this reputation centers on his favored style of working. Being an actor known for immerses himself in his characters – for instance, while filming the Lincoln biopic, he had Steven Spielberg address him as “Mr President” throughout the shoot – audiences has grown increasingly obsessed with his process. Did he really send texts to Sally Field in character as Lincoln? Did he only eat animals he’d killed during Last of the Mohicans? Did he demand receiving food via spoon while filming My Left Foot?
Madness in their method: has the public lost interest with actorly excess?
Currently, Daniel Day-Lewis has returned in the limelight, somewhat reluctantly, promoting his latest movie Anemone. And he is using this to express his frustration at how method acting is perceived. “I am somewhat annoyed nowadays to hear all kinds of people gobbling off and using phrases like ‘gone full method’, which I think is meant to imply that a person’s behaving like a lunatic in a drastic way,” he told the New York Times. “People often concentrate on the less important details of the work, and those details typically include some form of self-punishment or an experience that imposes upon oneself a severe discomfort or mental instability. However, in the career of an actor, it has to principally be about the inner transformation.”
An Industry Full of Followers
Frankly, this sounds as if the actor has come out from seclusion only to discover shocked by the acting community that has developed in his image. If you’re widely considered among the best performers to ever work, and your process involves striking a prop to the point of injury (for Gangs of New York) or spending 48 hours in solitary confinement deprived of sustenance (during In the Name of the Father), then it stands to reason that other actors will want to emulate that example by trying to mimic your hero.
In other words, we now live in an environment full of imperfect Day-Lewis impersonators who want nothing more than to demonstrate the sheer amount of dedication they invest in a character. At the shallow end of the pool we have people like Lady Gaga, who was so desperate to earn an Academy Award with House of Gucci that she dedicated the whole campaign attempting to persuade people that she became functionally Italian over 18 months in preparation.
Additionally, there is Jared Leto, who chose to deeply embed himself into the role of the Joker (in Suicide Squad) by sending “horrifying” gifts to fellow cast members. These, according to various accounts, included deceased animals to anal beads and personal hygiene products, though Leto denied the most extreme claims. Then, of course, we have Jim Carrey, who immersed himself so fully as Andy Kaufman for Man on the Moon that filmmakers literally managed in creating a feature-length documentary out of B-roll of him causing difficulties as impossible as he could for his colleagues.
Contemporary Method Practitioners
The main Method Guy at the moment would appear to be Jeremy Strong (formerly Day-Lewis’s assistant), whose process while filming Succession was so rigorously detailed that it became the subject of a derisive magazine feature, full of quotes from individuals who were worried for his behaviour (“The toll to himself that worries me,” said Brian Cox) or annoyed beyond all measure by his actions (“I recall him causing others roll their eyes,” said an anonymous cast member).
The actor says he ‘never intended to retire, really’
We have numerous additional cases. Andrew Garfield abstained from sex over half a year 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, in part, is meant to invoke the dedication in which Day-Lewis takes his craft.
A Noble Yet Challenging Fight
And, although his rebuttal against method detractors might be noble, a short publicity tour may prove insufficient to alter perceptions, let alone their behaviour. Maybe if he wants to remind people the true essence of the Method, or to show them its potential results, then Day-Lewis’s best bet is to just start making more films. Surely we could all support that idea.
