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It’s been a long while since anyone saw or heard from the acclaimed actor Daniel Day-Lewis. Following his announcement in 2017 declaring he would cease to work as an actor, prior to the debut of The Phantom Thread, Day-Lewis quietly faded from view. However, in his absence, his reputation expanded further.

The Mythos Surrounding His Method

Primarily, this reputation revolves around his favored style of working. Being an actor known for disappears into his characters – for example, while filming the Lincoln biopic, reportedly asked Steven Spielberg address him as “Mr President” throughout the shoot – the world has become increasingly obsessed with his process. Did he actually sent messages to co-star Sally Field in character as Lincoln? Did he only eat animals he’d killed for The Last of the Mohicans? Did he demand being spoon-fed for My Left Foot?

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

Now, Day-Lewis is back to public attention, with some hesitation, for his new film Anemone. And he is taking this chance to express his frustration at how the Method technique is perceived. “I’m a little cross nowadays to hear all kinds of people talking carelessly and using phrases 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 superficial details of the work, and those details typically include some form of self-punishment or a situation that causes a severe discomfort or mental instability. However, in the career for a performer, it has to mainly focus on the internal work.”

An Industry of Imitators

To be honest, it appears like Day-Lewis has come out from seclusion and found himself shocked by the world that has developed mirroring his methods. If you’re widely considered among the best performers in history, and your approach involves striking a prop to the point of injury (in Gangs of New York) or enduring two days in isolation without food or water (during In the Name of the Father), then it stands to reason that fellow performers will want to fill that vacuum by imitating your hero.

Essentially, we exist in an environment populated by half-cocked Day-Lewis impersonators who strive only to demonstrate the extensive degree of effort they put into their roles. On the milder side of the pool there are performers such as Lady Gaga, who was so desperate to earn an Academy Award with House of Gucci that she dedicated the entire promotion trying to convince everyone that she transformed into an Italian native for a year and a half in preparation.

Then we have Jared Leto, who decided to immerse himself into the role as the Joker (in Suicide Squad) by sending “disturbing” gifts to his castmates. These, depending on who you ask, 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 into Andy Kaufman for Man on the Moon that they literally managed to get a full-length documentary out of B-roll of him making life as impossible as he could for his colleagues.

Contemporary Method Practitioners

The foremost Method Guy 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 critical New Yorker profile, including statements from individuals who were worried about his conduct (“The toll to himself that worries me,” remarked Brian Cox) or extremely irritated by it (“I remember him causing everyone else to react with exasperation,” stated an anonymous cast member).

The actor says he ‘never intended to stop acting, truly’

We have numerous additional cases. Andrew Garfield went celibate for six months for Silence. Leonardo DiCaprio rested inside an animal carcass during The Revenant. There’s a fighting chance that actor Austin Butler continues to talk like Elvis Presley, years following the movie’s release. All of this, in part, aims to evoke the dedication in which Day-Lewis takes his work.

An Admirable But Uphill Fight

Moreover, although his rebuttal to critics of the Method might be noble, a short publicity tour may prove insufficient to change anyone’s mind, not to mention their behaviour. Maybe if he wishes to remind people the true essence of the Method, or to show them what it can achieve, then the optimal strategy for Day-Lewis is to simply begin producing additional movies. Certainly we could all support that idea.