It’s 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 work as an actor, prior to the debut of Phantom Thread, Day-Lewis quietly faded from view. Yet, during his hiatus, his reputation expanded further.
The Legend of His Acting Method
Primarily, this legend centers on his preferred style of working. Being an actor who famously disappears into his characters – for example, during the Lincoln biopic, he had the director call him “Mr. President” for the entire production – audiences has become more fascinated with how he works. Is it true he really send messages to co-star Sally Field in character as Lincoln? Did he only eat game he hunted for The Last of the Mohicans? Did he insist on being spoon-fed for My Left Foot?
Madness in their method: has the public fallen out of love with over-the-top performances?
Now, Day-Lewis is back in the limelight, somewhat reluctantly, for his new film Anemone. And he is using this to express his anger at how method acting is perceived. “I’m a little cross these days to hear all kinds of people talking carelessly and using phrases like ‘fully embraced the Method’, which seems is meant to imply that a person’s behaving like a lunatic in a drastic way,” he stated to a major publication. “People tends to focus on the less important aspects of acting, and these elements 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 of an actor, it must mainly focus on the inner transformation.”
An Industry 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 been created mirroring his methods. If you’re widely considered one of the greatest performers to ever work, and your process includes striking a prop to the point of injury (for Gangs of New York) or enduring 48 hours in solitary confinement deprived of sustenance (for In the Name of the Father), it’s natural that fellow performers will want to emulate that example by trying to mimic their idol.
Essentially, we now live in an environment populated by imperfect imitators of Day-Lewis who strive only to show the world the extensive degree of effort they invest in their roles. At the shallow end of the pool there are performers such as Lady Gaga, who was determined to win an Oscar for House of Gucci that she spent the whole campaign trying to convince everyone that she transformed into an Italian native for a year and a half as preparation.
Then we have Jared Leto, who decided to immerse himself in the character of the Joker (for Suicide Squad) through sending “horrifying” gifts to his castmates. These, according to various accounts, included dead pigs and rats to anal beads and used condoms, though the actor refuted the most extreme claims. And then, of course, there is Jim Carrey, who immersed himself so fully as Andy Kaufman for Man on the Moon that they succeeded to get a full-length documentary out of B-roll of him making life as impossible as he could for everyone around him.
Contemporary Followers of the Method
The foremost Method Guy currently would appear to be Jeremy Strong (once Day-Lewis’s assistant), whose process during Succession was so laboriously intensive that it became the subject of a derisive New Yorker profile, full of quotes from individuals who were worried for his behaviour (“It’s the cost to himself that worries me,” remarked Brian Cox) or extremely irritated by it (“I recall him causing everyone else to react with exasperation,” said an anonymous cast member).
The actor says he ‘did not plan to stop acting, really’
There are numerous additional cases. Andrew Garfield went celibate for six months for Silence. Leonardo DiCaprio rested inside a dead animal for The Revenant. There’s a fighting chance that actor Austin Butler still speaks like Elvis Presley, three years after that film came out. All of this, in part, is meant to invoke the dedication with which Day-Lewis takes his work.
An Admirable Yet Challenging Fight
And, while his fightback to critics of the Method might be noble, a short publicity tour may prove insufficient to change anyone’s mind, let alone their practices. Maybe if he wishes to remind people 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 support that idea.
