It’s been a long while since the public saw or heard from Daniel Day-Lewis. Following his statement in 2017 declaring he would no longer pursue acting, just before the release of The Phantom Thread, Day-Lewis withdrew from the spotlight. Yet, in his absence, his legend has only grown.
The Legend Surrounding His Method
Largely, this reputation revolves around his favored approach to roles. As someone who famously disappears into his characters – 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 really send texts to Sally Field in character as Lincoln? Did he only eat game he hunted during The Last of the Mohicans? And did he insist on receiving food via spoon for My Left Foot?
Madness in their method: has the public fallen out of love with over-the-top performances?
Now, Daniel Day-Lewis is back in the limelight, with some hesitation, promoting his latest movie Anemone. He is taking this chance to express his frustration regarding how the Method technique is perceived. “I am somewhat annoyed nowadays to hear various individuals gobbling off and using phrases like ‘fully embraced the Method’, which seems is meant to imply that someone is behaving like a lunatic in an extreme fashion,” he told the New York Times. “People often concentrate on the less important aspects of acting, and those details always seem to involve some sort of self-punishment or a situation that imposes upon oneself extreme unease or psychological strain. However, in the life for a performer, it has to principally be about the inner transformation.”
A World Full of Followers
Frankly, it appears as if the actor has come out from seclusion only to discover shocked by the world that has been created in his image. If you’re widely considered among the best performers in history, and your process includes headbutting a dummy to the point of injury (for 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 your hero.
Essentially, we now live in an environment full of imperfect Day-Lewis impersonators who strive only to demonstrate the extensive degree of effort they invest in a character. At the shallow end of this trend we have people like Lady Gaga, who was so desperate to win an Oscar for House of Gucci that she spent the whole campaign trying to convince everyone that she transformed into functionally Italian over 18 months in preparation.
Then we have Jared Leto, who decided to deeply embed himself in the character of the Joker (for Suicide Squad) through sending “disturbing” presents to fellow cast members. These items, according to various accounts, range from dead pigs and rats to anal beads and used condoms, though the actor refuted the most extreme claims. Then, naturally, there is Jim Carrey, who immersed himself so fully as Andy Kaufman during Man on the Moon that they succeeded to get a full-length documentary out of B-roll of him causing difficulties as impossible as he could for everyone around him.
Contemporary Followers of the Method
The main practitioner of the Method at the moment seems to be Jeremy Strong (formerly Day-Lewis’s assistant), whose approach while filming Succession was so laboriously intensive that it became the basis of a derisive New Yorker profile, full of quotes from people who were worried about his conduct (“It’s the cost on himself that worries me,” remarked Brian Cox) or annoyed beyond all measure by it (“I remember him causing others to react with exasperation,” stated an unnamed co-star).
The actor says he ‘did not plan to stop acting, truly’
We have so many other examples. Andrew Garfield abstained from sex for six months while preparing for Silence. Leonardo DiCaprio rested inside a dead animal for The Revenant. There’s a fighting chance that actor Austin Butler continues to talk like Elvis Presley, years following the movie’s release. All of this, to some extent, aims to evoke the seriousness with which Day-Lewis takes his work.
A Noble But Uphill Battle
Moreover, although his rebuttal against method detractors might be noble, a short publicity tour might not be enough to change anyone’s mind, let alone their practices. Maybe if he wishes to remind people the true essence of the Method, or to show them what it can achieve, then the optimal strategy for Day-Lewis is to just begin producing additional movies. Certainly we could all get behind that.
