🔗 Share this article Daniel Day-Lewis Voices Annoyance Over The Method Approach Being Compared to ‘Acting Insanely’ – Which Is Precisely the Reason It Captivates Us It’s been a long while since anyone saw or heard from Daniel Day-Lewis. After he announcement in 2017 that he would cease to pursue acting, just before the debut of Phantom Thread, Day-Lewis withdrew from the spotlight. However, in his absence, his reputation has only grown. The Mythos of His Method Primarily, this legend revolves around his favored style of working. As someone who famously immerses himself in the roles he plays – for example, while filming Lincoln, reportedly asked Steven Spielberg address him as “Mr. President” throughout the shoot – audiences has grown increasingly obsessed with how he works. Did he really send messages to co-star Sally Field in character as Lincoln? Was it accurate that he consumed solely animals he’d killed for Last of the Mohicans? And did he insist on being spoon-fed while filming My Left Foot? Madness in their method: have we fallen out of love with over-the-top performances? Currently, Daniel Day-Lewis has returned to public attention, with some hesitation, promoting his latest movie Anemone. He is using this to express his frustration regarding how method acting is viewed. “I’m a little cross these days when I hear various individuals talking carelessly and saying things like ‘fully embraced the Method’, which I think is meant to imply that someone is behaving like a lunatic in an extreme fashion,” he told the New York Times. “People often concentrate on the less important aspects of acting, and those details typically include some form of self-flagellation or a situation that causes a severe discomfort or mental instability. But of course, in the life of an actor, it has to mainly focus on the internal work.” A World of Imitators To be honest, it appears as if Day-Lewis has come out from his retreat only to discover shocked by the acting community that has been created mirroring his methods. If you’re widely considered one of the greatest actors to ever work, and your approach involves striking a prop 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), it’s natural that other actors will attempt to fill that vacuum by trying to mimic your hero. Fully immersed in Italian culture … Lady Gaga in her role for House of Gucci. Essentially, we now live in a landscape populated by half-cocked imitators of Day-Lewis who want nothing more than to demonstrate the extensive degree of dedication they invest in their roles. On the milder side of this trend we have people like Lady Gaga, who was so desperate to win an Oscar with House of Gucci that she spent the entire promotion trying to convince everyone that she became functionally Italian over 18 months as preparation. Then we have Jared Leto, who decided to immerse himself in the character as the Joker (in Suicide Squad) by sending “horrifying” presents to fellow cast members. These, depending on who you ask, range from dead pigs and rats to anal beads and used condoms, though Leto denied the most extreme claims. And then, of course, we have Jim Carrey, who immersed himself so fully into Andy Kaufman during Man on the Moon that they literally managed to get a full-length documentary from behind-the-scenes footage of him making life as impossible as he could for his colleagues. Contemporary Followers of the Method The foremost practitioner of the Method at the moment seems to be Jeremy Strong (formerly an assistant to Day-Lewis), whose approach while filming Succession was so laboriously intensive that it formed the subject of a critical magazine feature, full of quotes from people who were either concerned for his behaviour (“It’s the cost on himself concerns me,” said Brian Cox) or extremely irritated by his actions (“I recall [him] making others to react with exasperation,” said an anonymous cast member). Daniel Day-Lewis says he ‘never intended to stop acting, really’ We have numerous additional cases. Andrew Garfield abstained from sex over half a year while preparing for Silence. Leonardo DiCaprio slept in an animal carcass for The Revenant. There’s a fighting chance that actor Austin Butler continues to talk in the style of Elvis, three years after the movie’s release. All of this, in part, aims to evoke the dedication in which Day-Lewis takes his work. A Noble But Uphill Battle Moreover, although his rebuttal to critics of the Method could be commendable, a brief promotional cycle may prove insufficient to alter perceptions, not to mention their practices. Maybe if he wants to make audiences recall what method acting is, or to show them what it can achieve, then the optimal strategy for Day-Lewis is to just begin producing more films. Certainly everyone would support that idea.