It has been quite some time since anyone saw or heard from Daniel Day-Lewis. After he announcement in 2017 that he would no longer pursue acting, prior to the debut of Phantom Thread, Day-Lewis quietly faded from view. However, in his absence, his reputation 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 the roles he plays – for instance, while filming the Lincoln biopic, reportedly asked the director address him as “Mr. President” throughout the shoot – audiences has become increasingly obsessed with how he works. Did he actually sent messages to co-star Sally Field in character as Lincoln? Was it accurate that he consumed solely game he hunted during The Last of the Mohicans? Did he insist on being spoon-fed for My Left Foot?
Extreme acting methods: have we lost interest with over-the-top performances?
Currently, Day-Lewis is back in the limelight, somewhat reluctantly, promoting his latest movie Anemone. He is using this to express his anger regarding how method acting is viewed. “I’m a little cross these days to hear various individuals gobbling off and using phrases like ‘gone full method’, which seems suggests that someone is acting insane in an extreme fashion,” he stated to a major publication. “People often concentrate on superficial details of the work, and these elements typically include some sort of self-flagellation or a situation that imposes upon oneself a severe discomfort or psychological strain. However, in the career for a performer, it has to principally be about the inner transformation.”
A World Full of Followers
Frankly, this sounds like the actor has emerged from his retreat and found himself shocked by the world that has developed in his image. When you are regarded as one of the greatest performers in history, and your process involves striking a prop to the point of injury (for Gangs of New York) or enduring two days in solitary confinement deprived of sustenance (during In the Name of the Father), it’s natural that fellow performers will want to fill that vacuum by trying to mimic your hero.
Essentially, we now live in a landscape populated by half-cocked imitators of Day-Lewis who strive only to demonstrate the extensive degree of effort they invest in their roles. At the shallow end of this trend there are performers such as Lady Gaga, who was so desperate to win an Oscar with House of Gucci that she dedicated the entire promotion trying to convince everyone that she became functionally Italian for a year and a half in preparation.
Then we have Jared Leto, who chose to deeply embed himself into the role as the Joker (for Suicide Squad) by sending “horrifying” gifts to fellow cast members. These, depending on who you ask, included dead pigs and rats to anal beads and personal hygiene products, although Leto denied the most extreme claims. And then, naturally, there is Jim Carrey, who immersed himself so fully as Andy Kaufman for Man on the Moon that filmmakers succeeded to get a full-length documentary from behind-the-scenes footage of him causing difficulties as impossible as he could for his colleagues.
The Modern Followers of the Method
The foremost practitioner of the Method at the moment seems to be Jeremy Strong (formerly Day-Lewis’s assistant), whose approach while filming Succession was so laboriously intensive that it became the subject of a derisive New Yorker profile, full of quotes from individuals who were worried about his conduct (“The toll to himself concerns me,” said co-star Brian Cox) or annoyed beyond all measure by it (“I remember him causing others roll their eyes,” stated an unnamed co-star).
Daniel Day-Lewis says he ‘never intended to retire, really’
We have numerous additional cases. Andrew Garfield went celibate over half a year for Silence. Leonardo DiCaprio slept in an animal carcass for The Revenant. There’s a fighting chance that Austin Butler continues to talk in the style of Elvis, three years after that film came out. Each of these instances, in part, is meant to invoke the seriousness in which Day-Lewis takes his craft.
An Admirable Yet Challenging Battle
And, although his rebuttal against method detractors might be noble, a short publicity tour may prove insufficient to change anyone’s mind, let alone their behaviour. Perhaps if he wishes to remind people the true essence of the Method, or to show them its potential results, then the optimal strategy for Day-Lewis is to just start making more films. Certainly everyone would support that idea.
