🔗 Share this article

It’s been a long while since anyone caught a glimpse of Daniel Day-Lewis. Following his announcement in 2017 declaring he would cease to pursue acting, prior to the debut of The Phantom Thread, Day-Lewis withdrew from the spotlight. However, during his hiatus, his legend has only grown.

The Legend Surrounding His Acting Method

Primarily, this reputation revolves around his preferred style of working. Being an actor known for disappears into the roles he plays – for example, during Lincoln, reportedly asked Steven Spielberg address him as “Mr. President” throughout the shoot – audiences has become more fascinated with his process. Did he actually sent messages to co-star Sally Field as Abraham Lincoln? Was it accurate that he consumed solely animals he’d killed during The Last of the Mohicans? And did he insist on being spoon-fed for My Left Foot?

Extreme acting methods: have we lost interest with actorly excess?

Now, Daniel Day-Lewis has returned to public attention, with some hesitation, for his new film Anemone. He is using this to express his anger regarding how method acting is viewed. “I’m a little cross nowadays when I hear all kinds of people talking carelessly and saying things like ‘fully embraced the Method’, which seems suggests that someone is behaving like a lunatic in an extreme fashion,” he stated to the New York Times. “People often concentrate on the less important 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. However, in the career of an actor, it has to principally be about the inner transformation.”

An Industry of Imitators

Frankly, it appears as if the actor has come out 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 in history, and your process involves striking a prop until you break your nose (in Gangs of New York) or enduring two days in solitary confinement deprived of sustenance (for In the Name of the Father), it’s natural that other actors will want to fill that vacuum by trying to mimic their idol.

In other words, we exist in a landscape full of imperfect imitators of Day-Lewis who want nothing more than to show the world the sheer amount of effort they put into a character. On the milder side of this trend we have people like Lady Gaga, who was determined to earn an Academy Award 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 as preparation.

Additionally, there is Jared Leto, who decided to deeply embed himself into the role of the Joker (in Suicide Squad) by sending “disturbing” gifts to his castmates. These items, according to various accounts, included dead pigs and rats to intimate objects and used condoms, although Leto denied those worst excesses. 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 causing difficulties as impossible as he could for his colleagues.

The Modern Followers of the Method

The foremost Method Guy currently would appear to be Jeremy Strong (once an assistant to Day-Lewis), whose process while filming Succession was so laboriously intensive that it became the subject of a derisive New Yorker profile, full of quotes from people who were either concerned for his behaviour (“The toll to himself concerns me,” said co-star Brian Cox) or annoyed beyond all measure by it (“I remember [him] making others roll their eyes,” stated an anonymous cast member).

Daniel Day-Lewis claims he ‘did not plan to retire, truly’

We have so many other examples. Andrew Garfield went celibate for six months while preparing for Silence. Leonardo DiCaprio slept in a dead animal during The Revenant. There’s a fighting chance that Austin Butler still speaks like Elvis Presley, three years after that film came out. Each of these instances, to some extent, is meant to invoke the dedication with which Day-Lewis takes his craft.

An Admirable Yet Challenging Fight

Moreover, although his rebuttal against method detractors could be commendable, a brief promotional cycle might not be enough to change anyone’s mind, not to mention 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 simply start making more films. Certainly we could all support that idea.