It’s been quite some time since the public saw or heard from the acclaimed actor Daniel Day-Lewis. After he announcement in 2017 declaring he would cease to pursue acting, just before the release of Phantom Thread, Day-Lewis withdrew from the spotlight. However, during his hiatus, his legend has only grown.
The Legend Surrounding His Acting Method
Largely, this legend centers on his favored approach to roles. Being an actor who famously disappears into his characters – for instance, while filming Lincoln, he had the director address him as “Mr. President” throughout the shoot – audiences has become more fascinated with how he works. Did he actually sent messages to co-star Sally Field as Abraham Lincoln? Did he consumed solely animals he’d killed during The Last of the Mohicans? Did he demand being spoon-fed while filming My Left Foot?
Extreme acting methods: have we lost interest with over-the-top performances?
Now, Day-Lewis has returned in the limelight, somewhat reluctantly, promoting his latest movie Anemone. He is using this to vocalise his frustration regarding how the Method technique is perceived. “I’m a little cross these days when I hear all kinds of people gobbling off and using phrases like ‘fully embraced the Method’, which I think is meant to imply that a person’s behaving like a lunatic in a drastic way,” he told the New York Times. “Everyone tends to focus on superficial aspects of acting, and those details always seem to involve some sort of self-flagellation or a situation that imposes upon oneself a severe discomfort or psychological strain. But of course, in the career of an actor, it has to principally be about the internal work.”
An Industry Full of Followers
Frankly, it appears as if Day-Lewis has come out from seclusion only to discover shocked by the acting community that has developed in his image. If you’re regarded as one of the greatest performers in history, and your process involves headbutting a dummy to the point of injury (in Gangs of New York) or enduring two days in solitary confinement without food or water (during In the Name of the Father), then it stands to reason that other actors will attempt to fill that vacuum by imitating your hero.
In other words, we exist in an environment populated by half-cocked Day-Lewis impersonators who strive only to demonstrate the sheer amount of effort they put into a character. At the shallow end of this trend we have people like Lady Gaga, who was so desperate to earn an Academy Award for House of Gucci that she dedicated the whole campaign trying to convince everyone that she transformed into an Italian native over 18 months in preparation.
Then we have Jared Leto, who decided to deeply embed himself in the character of the Joker (in Suicide Squad) by sending “disturbing” presents to fellow cast members. These, depending on who you ask, included dead pigs and rats to intimate objects and used condoms, though Leto denied those worst excesses. Then, of course, there is Jim Carrey, who went so deep into Andy Kaufman for Man on the Moon that filmmakers succeeded in creating a full-length documentary from behind-the-scenes footage of him causing difficulties as impossible as he could for his colleagues.
Contemporary Followers of the Method
The main practitioner of the Method at the moment 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 critical magazine feature, full of quotes from people who were worried for his behaviour (“The toll on himself concerns me,” remarked Brian Cox) or extremely irritated by it (“I remember him causing everyone else to react with exasperation,” stated an unnamed co-star).
The actor claims he ‘did not plan to retire, truly’
We have so many other examples. Andrew Garfield went celibate over half a year while preparing for Silence. Leonardo DiCaprio slept in an animal carcass during The Revenant. There’s a fighting chance that actor Austin Butler continues to talk like Elvis Presley, three years after that film came out. All of this, to some extent, is meant to invoke the seriousness in which Day-Lewis takes his craft.
An Admirable But Uphill Fight
Moreover, although his rebuttal against method detractors could be commendable, a brief promotional cycle may prove insufficient to alter perceptions, let alone their behaviour. Perhaps if he wishes to make audiences recall what method acting is, or to show them its potential results, then Day-Lewis’s best bet is to simply begin producing more films. Certainly everyone would get behind that.
