It has been a long while since anyone caught a glimpse of Daniel Day-Lewis. After he statement in 2017 declaring he would no longer work as an actor, prior to the release of The Phantom Thread, Day-Lewis quietly faded from view. Yet, during his hiatus, his legend has only grown.
The Legend of His Method
Largely, this legend centers on his preferred approach to roles. As someone known for immerses himself in the roles he plays – for instance, during the Lincoln biopic, he had Steven Spielberg call him “Mr President” for the entire production – audiences has become more fascinated with his process. Did he actually sent texts to Sally Field in character as Lincoln? Did he only eat game he hunted during Last of the Mohicans? Did he demand receiving food via spoon while filming My Left Foot?
Madness in their method: has the public fallen out of love with actorly excess?
Currently, Daniel Day-Lewis is back in the limelight, with some hesitation, promoting his latest movie Anemone. He is taking this chance to vocalise his frustration at how method acting is viewed. “I’m a little cross these days when I hear various individuals gobbling off and using phrases like ‘fully embraced the Method’, which seems is meant to imply that a person’s behaving like a lunatic in an extreme fashion,” he told a major publication. “Everyone tends to focus on superficial details of the work, and those details typically include some form of self-flagellation or a situation that imposes upon oneself extreme unease or psychological strain. However, in the life of an actor, it has to mainly focus on the internal work.”
An Industry of Imitators
To be honest, this sounds like the actor has emerged from his retreat only to discover aghast at the world that has been created in his image. If you’re widely considered among the best performers to ever work, and your process involves headbutting a dummy to the point of injury (in Gangs of New York) or enduring two days in isolation without food or water (for In the Name of the Father), then it stands to reason that fellow performers will want to fill that vacuum by imitating your hero.
In other words, we now live in a landscape populated by half-cocked imitators of Day-Lewis who want nothing more than to show the world the extensive degree of effort they invest in their roles. On the milder side of the pool there are performers such as Lady Gaga, who was determined to earn an Academy Award with House of Gucci that she dedicated the whole campaign trying to convince everyone 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 (in Suicide Squad) by sending “horrifying” gifts to his castmates. These, depending on who you ask, included deceased animals to intimate objects and used condoms, although Leto denied those worst excesses. Then, of course, there is Jim Carrey, who immersed himself so fully as Andy Kaufman during Man on the Moon that they succeeded in creating 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 foremost practitioner of the Method currently would appear to be Jeremy Strong (once Day-Lewis’s assistant), whose approach while filming Succession was so rigorously detailed that it became the subject of a derisive New Yorker profile, full of quotes from people who were either concerned for his behaviour (“It’s the cost to himself concerns me,” remarked co-star Brian Cox) or annoyed beyond all measure by his actions (“I remember [him] making others roll their eyes,” said an anonymous cast member).
Daniel Day-Lewis says he ‘never intended to stop acting, really’
We have numerous additional cases. Andrew Garfield went celibate over half a year for Silence. Leonardo DiCaprio slept in an animal carcass during The Revenant. There’s a fighting chance that actor Austin Butler still speaks in the style of Elvis, years following that film came out. All of this, to some extent, is meant to invoke the seriousness with which Day-Lewis approaches his craft.
An Admirable Yet Challenging Battle
Moreover, although his rebuttal against method detractors might be noble, a brief promotional cycle may prove insufficient to alter perceptions, not to mention their behaviour. Maybe if he wants to make audiences recall what method acting is, or to show them its potential results, then the optimal strategy for Day-Lewis is to just start making additional movies. Surely everyone would get behind that.
