It’s been quite some time since anyone caught a glimpse of Daniel Day-Lewis. After he statement in 2017 that he would no longer pursue acting, prior to the release of The Phantom Thread, Day-Lewis withdrew from the spotlight. However, during his hiatus, his legend expanded further.
The Legend of His Method
Largely, this legend centers on his preferred style of working. As someone known for immerses himself in his characters – for example, during Lincoln, reportedly asked the director call him “Mr. President” throughout the shoot – audiences has grown more fascinated with how he works. Is it true he actually sent texts to Sally Field in character as Lincoln? Was it accurate that he consumed solely game he hunted during Last of the Mohicans? Did he insist on 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 to public attention, somewhat reluctantly, promoting his latest movie Anemone. And he is using this to express his anger at how the Method technique is viewed. “I’m a little cross these days when I hear various individuals gobbling off and using phrases like ‘gone full method’, which seems suggests that a person’s behaving like a lunatic in a drastic way,” he told the New York Times. “Everyone often concentrate on superficial details of the work, and those details typically include some form of self-flagellation or a situation that causes extreme unease or mental instability. But of course, in the life for a performer, it must principally be about the internal work.”
A World of Imitators
To be honest, this sounds as if Day-Lewis has emerged from his retreat only to discover shocked by the acting community that has developed mirroring his methods. If you’re regarded as one of the greatest actors to ever work, and your approach involves striking a prop to the point of injury (in Gangs of New York) or enduring two days in solitary confinement without food or water (during In the Name of the Father), it’s natural that other actors will want to fill that vacuum by imitating your hero.
Essentially, we now live in a landscape populated by imperfect imitators of Day-Lewis who want nothing more than to show the world the extensive degree of effort they invest in a character. At the shallow end of this trend there are performers such as Lady Gaga, who was determined to earn an Academy Award for House of Gucci that she spent the entire promotion trying to convince everyone that she transformed into functionally Italian for a year and a half in preparation.
Then we have Jared Leto, who chose to deeply embed himself in the character of the Joker (for Suicide Squad) by sending “horrifying” presents to his castmates. These, depending on who you ask, included dead pigs and rats to intimate objects and used condoms, though Leto denied those worst excesses. Then, of course, there is Jim Carrey, who immersed himself so fully into Andy Kaufman for Man on the Moon that they succeeded in creating a full-length documentary from behind-the-scenes footage of him making life as impossible as he could for everyone around him.
The Modern Method Practitioners
The foremost Method Guy at the moment seems to be Jeremy Strong (formerly an assistant to Day-Lewis), whose approach during Succession was so laboriously intensive that it formed the basis of a critical New Yorker profile, including statements from individuals who were either concerned for his behaviour (“It’s the cost to himself concerns me,” remarked Brian Cox) or annoyed beyond all measure by it (“I recall [him] making everyone else to react with exasperation,” stated an unnamed co-star).
Daniel Day-Lewis claims he ‘did not plan to stop acting, truly’
We have numerous additional cases. Andrew Garfield went celibate over half a year while preparing for Silence. Leonardo DiCaprio rested inside a dead animal for The Revenant. It’s quite possible that actor Austin Butler continues to talk like Elvis Presley, three years after the movie’s release. Each of these instances, in part, is meant to invoke the seriousness in which Day-Lewis takes his work.
An Admirable Yet Challenging Fight
And, while his fightback against method detractors could be commendable, a brief promotional cycle 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 begin producing additional movies. Certainly we could all get behind that.
