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It has been quite some time since anyone saw or heard from the acclaimed actor Daniel Day-Lewis. Following his announcement in 2017 declaring he would cease to pursue acting, prior to the release of Phantom Thread, the actor quietly faded from view. However, in his absence, his reputation expanded further.

The Mythos of His Acting Method

Largely, this legend revolves around his favored approach to roles. As someone who famously immerses himself in the roles he plays – for example, during Lincoln, reportedly asked the director call him “Mr President” throughout the shoot – audiences has become increasingly obsessed with how he works. Did he really send texts to Sally Field in character as Lincoln? Did he only eat game he hunted during The Last of the Mohicans? And did he demand receiving food via spoon while filming My Left Foot?

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

Currently, Day-Lewis has returned to public attention, with some hesitation, for his new film Anemone. And he is taking this chance to vocalise his anger at how method acting is perceived. “I’m a little cross nowadays when I hear all kinds of people gobbling off 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 a major publication. “Everyone tends to focus on superficial details of the work, and these elements always seem to involve some sort of self-flagellation or an experience that causes extreme unease or mental instability. But of course, in the life for a performer, it has to mainly focus on the internal work.”

An Industry of Imitators

Frankly, it appears like the actor has come out from seclusion only to discover shocked by the acting community that has developed mirroring his methods. When you are widely considered among the best performers to ever work, and your approach involves striking a prop to the point of injury (for Gangs of New York) or enduring 48 hours in solitary confinement without food or water (during In the Name of the Father), it’s natural that other actors will want to emulate that example by trying to mimic your hero.

Essentially, we exist in an environment full of half-cocked imitators of Day-Lewis who want nothing more than to show the world the extensive degree of effort 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 dedicated the entire promotion attempting to persuade people that she became an Italian native for a year and a half as preparation.

Then we have Jared Leto, who chose to deeply embed himself into the role as the Joker (for Suicide Squad) through sending “horrifying” gifts to fellow cast members. These items, depending on who you ask, included dead pigs and rats to intimate objects and personal hygiene products, although Leto denied the most extreme claims. Then, naturally, we have Jim Carrey, who immersed himself so fully as Andy Kaufman during Man on the Moon that they succeeded in creating a full-length documentary out of B-roll of him making life as impossible as he could for everyone around him.

The Modern Method Practitioners

The main Method Guy at the moment would appear to be Jeremy Strong (formerly an assistant to Day-Lewis), whose process while filming Succession was so laboriously intensive that it became the subject of a critical New Yorker profile, full of quotes from people who were either concerned about his conduct (“It’s the cost to himself concerns me,” remarked Brian Cox) or annoyed beyond all measure by his actions (“I remember [him] making others roll their eyes,” stated an unnamed co-star).

Daniel Day-Lewis says he ‘did not plan to retire, really’

There are numerous additional cases. Andrew Garfield abstained from sex over half a year for Silence. Leonardo DiCaprio slept in an animal carcass during The Revenant. There’s a fighting chance that Austin Butler still speaks in the style of Elvis, three years after the movie’s release. All of this, to some extent, aims to evoke the seriousness in which Day-Lewis takes his work.

A Noble But Uphill Battle

And, although his rebuttal against method detractors could be commendable, a short publicity tour might not be enough to change anyone’s mind, let alone their behaviour. Maybe if he wishes to remind people what method acting is, or to demonstrate what it can achieve, then Day-Lewis’s best bet is to just begin producing more films. Certainly everyone would support that idea.