It’s been a long while since anyone saw or heard from Daniel Day-Lewis. After he announcement in 2017 declaring he would no longer pursue acting, just before the debut of Phantom Thread, the actor withdrew from the spotlight. Yet, during his hiatus, his reputation expanded further.
The Legend Surrounding His Method
Primarily, this reputation revolves around his favored style of working. Being an actor who famously disappears into his characters – for instance, during Lincoln, he had the director address him as “Mr President” throughout the shoot – audiences has grown increasingly obsessed with how he works. Did he actually sent messages to co-star Sally Field as Abraham Lincoln? Was it accurate that he consumed solely animals he’d killed for The Last of the Mohicans? And did he insist on being spoon-fed while filming My Left Foot?
Madness in their method: have we lost interest with actorly excess?
Currently, Daniel Day-Lewis is back in the limelight, somewhat reluctantly, promoting his latest movie Anemone. And he is using this to express his anger at how the Method technique is perceived. “I’m a little cross nowadays to 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 a major publication. “People tends to focus on the less important details of the work, and these elements typically include some form of self-punishment or a situation that imposes upon oneself extreme unease or mental instability. But of course, in the life for a performer, it has to mainly focus on the internal work.”
An Industry of Imitators
To be honest, it appears like the actor has emerged from seclusion only to discover aghast at the world that has developed mirroring his methods. When you are 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 solitary confinement 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 now live in an environment full of imperfect imitators of Day-Lewis who want nothing more than to demonstrate the sheer amount of dedication they put into a character. At the shallow end of this trend we have people like Lady Gaga, who was so desperate 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.
Then we have Jared Leto, who chose to deeply embed himself in the character as the Joker (for Suicide Squad) through sending “horrifying” gifts to fellow cast members. These items, depending on who you ask, included dead pigs and rats to anal beads and used condoms, though the actor refuted the most extreme claims. Then, of course, there is Jim Carrey, who immersed himself so fully as Andy Kaufman during Man on the Moon that they literally managed in creating a feature-length documentary from behind-the-scenes footage of him causing difficulties as impossible as he could for his colleagues.
The Modern Followers of the Method
The main Method Guy currently would appear to be Jeremy Strong (formerly an assistant to Day-Lewis), whose process while filming Succession was so laboriously intensive that it formed the basis of a critical magazine feature, including statements from people who were either concerned about his conduct (“The toll to himself that worries me,” said co-star Brian Cox) or annoyed beyond all measure by his actions (“I recall him causing everyone else to react with exasperation,” stated an anonymous cast member).
The actor claims he ‘never intended to retire, really’
There are so many other examples. Andrew Garfield went celibate over half a year for Silence. Leonardo DiCaprio rested inside an animal carcass during The Revenant. It’s quite possible that Austin Butler still speaks like Elvis Presley, years following that film came out. All of this, to some extent, is meant to invoke the seriousness with which Day-Lewis takes his craft.
A Noble But Uphill Battle
Moreover, although his rebuttal against method detractors might be noble, a brief promotional cycle may prove insufficient to change anyone’s mind, let alone their behaviour. Perhaps if he wants to make audiences recall the true essence of the Method, or to show them what it can achieve, then Day-Lewis’s best bet is to simply start making more films. Surely we could all support that idea.
