It has been quite some time since anyone saw or heard from 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, the actor withdrew from the spotlight. However, in his absence, his legend expanded further.
The Legend Surrounding His Acting Method
Primarily, this reputation revolves around his favored style of working. As someone known for disappears into his characters – for example, during the Lincoln biopic, he had the director address him as “Mr President” for the entire production – 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 only eat animals he’d killed during The Last of the Mohicans? And did he insist on receiving food via spoon while filming My Left Foot?
Extreme acting methods: have we fallen out of love with over-the-top performances?
Now, Day-Lewis is back in the limelight, with some hesitation, promoting his latest movie Anemone. He is using this to express his anger at how method acting is viewed. “I’m a little cross these days to hear all kinds of people talking carelessly and using phrases like ‘gone full method’, which I think 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 superficial details of the work, and those details always seem to involve some form of self-flagellation or a situation that causes extreme unease or mental instability. However, in the career for a performer, it must principally be about the inner transformation.”
A World Full of Followers
Frankly, it appears as if Day-Lewis has come out from seclusion and found himself aghast at the world that has been created mirroring his methods. When you are widely considered one of the greatest performers to ever work, and your process involves striking a prop to the point of injury (for Gangs of New York) or spending two days in solitary confinement deprived of sustenance (during In the Name of the Father), it’s natural that fellow performers will attempt to fill that vacuum by imitating their idol.
Essentially, we exist in a landscape full of half-cocked Day-Lewis impersonators who want nothing more than to show the world the extensive degree of effort they put into their roles. On the milder side of this trend there are performers such as Lady Gaga, who was determined to earn an Academy Award for House of Gucci that she dedicated the whole campaign attempting to persuade people that she transformed into functionally Italian over 18 months as preparation.
Then we have Jared Leto, who decided to deeply embed himself into the role as the Joker (in Suicide Squad) by sending “horrifying” gifts to fellow cast members. These items, depending on who you ask, range from deceased animals to intimate objects and used condoms, though Leto denied those worst excesses. And then, of course, we have Jim Carrey, who went so deep into Andy Kaufman for Man on the Moon that filmmakers literally managed to get a feature-length documentary out of B-roll of him causing difficulties to the utmost for everyone around him.
The Modern Method Practitioners
The foremost practitioner of the Method at the moment seems to be Jeremy Strong (formerly Day-Lewis’s assistant), whose process while filming Succession was so rigorously detailed that it formed the basis of a critical magazine feature, full of quotes from individuals who were either concerned about his conduct (“The toll to himself concerns me,” said Brian Cox) or extremely irritated by his actions (“I remember him causing everyone else roll their eyes,” said an anonymous cast member).
The actor says he ‘did not plan to retire, truly’
We have so many other examples. Andrew Garfield abstained from sex for six months while preparing for Silence. Leonardo DiCaprio slept in a dead animal during The Revenant. It’s quite possible that actor Austin Butler still speaks like Elvis Presley, three years after that film came out. All of this, to some extent, is meant to invoke the seriousness with which Day-Lewis approaches his work.
An Admirable But Uphill Battle
And, while his fightback to critics of the Method might be noble, a brief promotional cycle might not be enough to alter perceptions, let alone their practices. Maybe if he wishes to remind people what method acting is, or to demonstrate what it can achieve, then Day-Lewis’s best bet is to simply begin producing additional movies. Surely we could all support that idea.
