🔗 Share this article

It’s been quite some time since anyone saw or heard from the acclaimed actor Daniel Day-Lewis. Following his announcement in 2017 that he would cease to work as an actor, just before the debut of Phantom Thread, the actor quietly faded from view. Yet, during his hiatus, his legend has only grown.

The Mythos Surrounding His Method

Primarily, this reputation revolves around his favored approach to roles. As someone known for immerses himself in his characters – for example, while filming the Lincoln biopic, reportedly asked Steven Spielberg address him as “Mr President” for the entire production – audiences has grown increasingly obsessed with how he works. Is it true he actually sent messages to co-star Sally Field as Abraham Lincoln? Did he only eat animals he’d killed for Last of the Mohicans? And did he demand receiving food via spoon for My Left Foot?

Madness in their method: has the public fallen out of love with actorly excess?

Currently, Daniel Day-Lewis has returned in the limelight, somewhat reluctantly, for his new film Anemone. He is using this to vocalise his anger at how the Method technique is viewed. “I am somewhat annoyed nowadays to hear various individuals gobbling off and saying things like ‘fully embraced the Method’, which I think is meant to imply that a person’s behaving like a lunatic in an extreme fashion,” he stated to a major publication. “Everyone tends to focus on the less important details of the work, and those details always seem to involve some form of self-punishment or a situation that causes a severe discomfort or mental instability. But of course, in the life for a performer, it must principally be about the inner transformation.”

An Industry of Imitators

To be honest, it appears as if Day-Lewis has emerged from seclusion only to discover aghast at the acting community that has developed in his image. If you’re widely considered among the best actors to ever work, and your approach involves headbutting a dummy until you break your nose (for Gangs of New York) or enduring two days in solitary confinement without food or water (for In the Name of the Father), then it stands to reason that other actors will attempt to emulate that example by trying to mimic their idol.

In other words, we now live in an environment populated by imperfect imitators of Day-Lewis who want nothing more than to demonstrate the extensive degree of effort they invest in a character. At the shallow end of this trend there are performers such as Lady Gaga, who was determined to win an Oscar for House of Gucci that she dedicated the entire promotion attempting to persuade people that she became functionally Italian for a year and a half as preparation.

Then we have Jared Leto, who chose to immerse himself into the role as the Joker (in Suicide Squad) by sending “horrifying” presents to fellow cast members. These items, according to various accounts, range from dead pigs and rats to anal beads and personal hygiene products, though Leto denied those worst excesses. Then, naturally, we have Jim Carrey, who immersed himself so fully into Andy Kaufman for Man on the Moon that filmmakers literally managed to get a full-length documentary out of B-roll of him causing difficulties as impossible as he could for everyone around him.

Contemporary Method Practitioners

The main practitioner of the Method currently would appear to be Jeremy Strong (formerly an assistant to Day-Lewis), whose process during Succession was so rigorously detailed that it formed the subject of a critical New Yorker profile, including statements from people who were either concerned about his conduct (“It’s the cost on himself concerns me,” remarked Brian Cox) or extremely irritated by it (“I recall him causing everyone else to react with exasperation,” stated an unnamed co-star).

Daniel Day-Lewis claims he ‘did not plan to stop acting, really’

We have so many other examples. Andrew Garfield abstained from sex over half a year while preparing for Silence. Leonardo DiCaprio rested inside an animal carcass for The Revenant. There’s a fighting chance that actor Austin Butler continues to talk like Elvis Presley, years following that film came out. All of this, in part, is meant to invoke the dedication with which Day-Lewis takes his work.

A Noble Yet Challenging Fight

Moreover, while his fightback to critics of the Method could be commendable, a short publicity tour may prove insufficient to alter perceptions, let alone their behaviour. Maybe if he wants to remind people what method acting is, or to demonstrate its potential results, then Day-Lewis’s best bet is to simply start making additional movies. Surely everyone would support that idea.