It has been a long while since anyone saw or heard from the acclaimed actor Daniel Day-Lewis. After he announcement in 2017 declaring he would no longer work as an actor, prior to the debut of Phantom Thread, Day-Lewis withdrew from the spotlight. Yet, during his hiatus, his reputation expanded further.
The Legend of His Acting Method
Primarily, this legend centers on his favored approach to roles. As someone known for disappears into the roles he plays – for instance, during Lincoln, reportedly asked Steven Spielberg address him as “Mr. President” throughout the shoot – audiences has grown more fascinated with how he works. Is it true he actually sent messages to co-star Sally Field as Abraham Lincoln? Did he consumed solely game he hunted during Last of the Mohicans? And did he demand being spoon-fed while filming My Left Foot?
Extreme acting methods: has the public lost interest with over-the-top performances?
Now, Daniel Day-Lewis is back to public attention, somewhat reluctantly, promoting his latest movie Anemone. He is using this to vocalise his frustration at how the Method technique is perceived. “I’m a little cross these days to hear all kinds of people gobbling off and saying things like ‘fully embraced the Method’, which seems suggests that someone is acting insane in an extreme fashion,” he stated to the New York Times. “People tends to focus on superficial aspects of acting, and these elements typically include some sort of self-flagellation or a situation that imposes upon oneself extreme unease or mental instability. However, in the career for a performer, it must principally be about the inner transformation.”
A World of Imitators
To be honest, this sounds as if Day-Lewis has emerged from his retreat and found himself aghast at the world that has developed mirroring his methods. If you’re regarded as one of the greatest performers to ever work, and your approach involves headbutting a dummy to the point of injury (for Gangs of New York) or spending 48 hours in isolation deprived of sustenance (for In the Name of the Father), then it stands to reason that fellow performers will attempt to fill that vacuum by trying to mimic your hero.
Essentially, we now live in an environment populated by half-cocked Day-Lewis impersonators who want nothing more than to demonstrate the extensive degree of dedication they put into a character. At the shallow end of this trend there are performers such as Lady Gaga, who was determined to earn an Academy Award with House of Gucci that she spent the entire promotion attempting to persuade people that she became an Italian native over 18 months as preparation.
Then we have Jared Leto, who decided to deeply embed himself into the role of the Joker (for Suicide Squad) through sending “horrifying” gifts to his castmates. These items, according to various accounts, range from dead pigs and rats to anal beads and personal hygiene products, although the actor refuted the most extreme claims. And then, naturally, there is Jim Carrey, who immersed himself so fully into Andy Kaufman during Man on the Moon that they succeeded in creating a feature-length documentary out of B-roll of him making life as impossible as he could for his colleagues.
Contemporary Followers of the Method
The foremost Method Guy currently seems to be Jeremy Strong (once an assistant to Day-Lewis), whose approach during Succession was so rigorously detailed that it became the subject of a critical New Yorker profile, full of quotes from individuals who were either concerned about his conduct (“It’s the cost to himself that worries me,” remarked co-star Brian Cox) or extremely irritated by his actions (“I recall [him] making everyone else roll their eyes,” stated an anonymous cast member).
The actor says he ‘never intended to stop acting, truly’
There are numerous additional cases. Andrew Garfield went celibate for six months for Silence. Leonardo DiCaprio slept in an animal carcass for The Revenant. There’s a fighting chance that Austin Butler still speaks like Elvis Presley, three years after that film came out. All of this, to some extent, aims to evoke the dedication with which Day-Lewis takes his work.
A Noble Yet Challenging Fight
And, although his rebuttal to critics of the Method might be noble, a short publicity tour might not be enough to alter perceptions, 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 Day-Lewis’s best bet is to simply start making more films. Surely we could all support that idea.
