It has been a long while since the public saw or heard from Daniel Day-Lewis. After he statement in 2017 declaring he would cease to work as an actor, prior to the release of The Phantom Thread, the actor withdrew from the spotlight. However, during his hiatus, his legend expanded further.
The Mythos of His Method
Primarily, this legend centers on his favored style of working. As someone known for disappears into his characters – for example, while filming Lincoln, he had Steven Spielberg address him as “Mr President” throughout the shoot – the world has grown more fascinated with his process. Did he actually sent texts to Sally Field in character as Lincoln? Did he consumed solely animals he’d killed for The Last of the Mohicans? Did he insist on being spoon-fed while filming My Left Foot?
Madness in their method: has the public fallen out of love with over-the-top performances?
Currently, Daniel Day-Lewis is back to public attention, with some hesitation, for his new film Anemone. And he is using this to express his frustration at how the Method technique is perceived. “I am somewhat annoyed these days when I hear all kinds of people gobbling off and using phrases like ‘gone full method’, which seems suggests that someone is behaving like a lunatic in an extreme fashion,” he stated to the New York Times. “People tends to focus on superficial details of the work, and those details typically include some sort of self-punishment or a situation that imposes upon oneself a severe discomfort or mental instability. But of course, in the life for a performer, it must principally be about the internal work.”
An Industry Full of Followers
To be honest, it appears like the actor has emerged from his retreat and found himself shocked by the world that has developed mirroring his methods. When you are widely considered among the best performers to ever work, and your process includes striking a prop to the point of injury (in Gangs of New York) or enduring 48 hours in isolation without food or water (for In the Name of the Father), then it stands to reason that other actors will want to emulate that example by trying to mimic their idol.
In other words, we now live in a landscape full of half-cocked imitators of Day-Lewis who want nothing more than to demonstrate the sheer amount of effort they put into their roles. On the milder side of this trend we have people like Lady Gaga, who was determined to win an Oscar for House of Gucci that she spent the entire promotion trying to convince everyone that she became functionally Italian 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) by sending “horrifying” presents to fellow cast members. These items, depending on who you ask, range from dead pigs and rats to anal beads and used condoms, though Leto denied the most extreme claims. And then, naturally, we have 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 making life to the utmost for everyone around him.
Contemporary Followers of the Method
The foremost practitioner of the Method at the moment would appear to be Jeremy Strong (once Day-Lewis’s assistant), whose approach while filming Succession was so rigorously detailed that it formed the basis of a derisive New Yorker profile, full of quotes from individuals who were worried about his conduct (“The toll on himself that worries me,” said Brian Cox) or annoyed beyond all measure by it (“I recall [him] making everyone else to react with exasperation,” said an anonymous cast member).
The actor claims he ‘never intended to stop acting, truly’
We have so many other examples. Andrew Garfield abstained from sex for six months while preparing for Silence. Leonardo DiCaprio slept in an animal carcass for The Revenant. It’s quite possible that 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 in which Day-Lewis takes his work.
An Admirable But Uphill Battle
Moreover, although his rebuttal to critics of the Method might be noble, a short publicity tour may prove insufficient to alter perceptions, not to mention their behaviour. Maybe if he wishes to remind people what method acting is, or to show them what it can achieve, then the optimal strategy for Day-Lewis is to simply start making more films. Certainly everyone would get behind that.
