It has been a long while since anyone saw or heard from the acclaimed actor Daniel Day-Lewis. After he statement in 2017 that he would no longer pursue acting, prior to the release of Phantom Thread, Day-Lewis quietly faded from view. However, in his absence, his reputation has only grown.
The Mythos of His Acting Method
Primarily, this reputation revolves around his preferred approach to roles. As someone who famously immerses himself in the roles he plays – for instance, while filming the Lincoln biopic, reportedly asked the director address him as “Mr President” for the entire production – audiences has grown increasingly obsessed with how he works. Did he really send texts to Sally Field as Abraham Lincoln? Did he only eat animals he’d killed during Last of the Mohicans? And did he insist on being spoon-fed for My Left Foot?
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Currently, Day-Lewis has returned to public attention, with some hesitation, for his new film Anemone. And he is using this to express his frustration regarding how method acting is viewed. “I’m a little cross nowadays to hear various individuals talking carelessly and using phrases 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. “Everyone often concentrate on the less important details of the work, and those details typically include some sort of self-flagellation or a situation that imposes upon oneself a severe discomfort or mental instability. However, in the career for a performer, it must principally be about the inner transformation.”
An Industry Full of Followers
To be honest, this sounds like the actor has emerged from seclusion only to discover aghast at the acting community that has been created mirroring his methods. When you are widely considered one of the greatest actors to ever work, and your approach involves striking a prop to the point of injury (for Gangs of New York) or spending two days in solitary confinement deprived of sustenance (for In the Name of the Father), then it stands to reason that fellow performers will want to fill that vacuum by imitating their idol.
Essentially, we now live in a landscape populated by imperfect Day-Lewis impersonators who strive only to show the world the extensive degree of dedication they invest in their roles. At the shallow end of the pool there are performers such as Lady Gaga, who was so desperate to earn an Academy Award for House of Gucci that she spent the entire promotion trying to convince everyone that she transformed into an Italian native over 18 months as preparation.
Then we have Jared Leto, who chose to immerse himself into the role as the Joker (in Suicide Squad) through sending “horrifying” gifts to his castmates. These, according to various accounts, included dead pigs and rats to intimate objects and used condoms, though Leto denied those worst excesses. Then, of course, we have Jim Carrey, who immersed himself so fully into Andy Kaufman for 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 his colleagues.
Contemporary Followers of the Method
The main Method Guy at the moment seems 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 individuals who were worried for his behaviour (“The toll to himself concerns me,” said Brian Cox) or extremely irritated by his actions (“I remember him causing others to react with exasperation,” said an unnamed co-star).
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There are so many other examples. Andrew Garfield abstained from sex over half a year while preparing for Silence. Leonardo DiCaprio slept in an animal carcass for The Revenant. There’s a fighting chance that Austin Butler still speaks like Elvis Presley, three years after that film came out. Each of these instances, to some extent, aims to evoke the dedication with which Day-Lewis takes his work.
A Noble Yet Challenging Battle
And, while his fightback against method detractors might be noble, a brief promotional cycle might not be enough to alter perceptions, let alone their behaviour. Perhaps if he wishes to remind people what method acting is, or to demonstrate what it can achieve, then the optimal strategy for Day-Lewis is to simply start making additional movies. Certainly we could all get behind that.
