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It has been a long while since the public caught a glimpse of the acclaimed actor Daniel Day-Lewis. Following his announcement in 2017 declaring he would no longer pursue acting, prior to the debut of The Phantom Thread, Day-Lewis withdrew from the spotlight. However, in his absence, his legend expanded further.

The Mythos Surrounding His Method

Largely, this legend centers on his preferred style of working. Being an actor known for disappears into his characters – for example, during Lincoln, reportedly asked the director call him “Mr President” for the entire production – the world has become increasingly obsessed with his process. Did he really send texts to Sally Field as Abraham Lincoln? Did he only eat animals he’d killed for Last of the Mohicans? Did he insist on being spoon-fed for My Left Foot?

Madness in their method: have we fallen out of love with over-the-top performances?

Currently, Daniel Day-Lewis is back in the limelight, somewhat reluctantly, for his new film Anemone. He is taking this chance to vocalise his anger at how method acting is perceived. “I am somewhat annoyed these days to hear various individuals gobbling off and using phrases like ‘gone full method’, which seems is meant to imply that a person’s acting insane in a drastic way,” he told a major publication. “People tends to focus on the less important details of the work, and those details typically include some form of self-flagellation or an experience that imposes upon oneself a severe discomfort or mental instability. However, in the career for a performer, it must mainly focus on the internal work.”

A World of Imitators

To be honest, this sounds like the actor has emerged from seclusion only to discover shocked by the acting community that has developed mirroring his methods. When you are widely considered one of the greatest performers in history, and your process involves striking a prop until you break your nose (in Gangs of New York) or spending 48 hours in solitary confinement deprived of sustenance (during In the Name of the Father), it’s natural that fellow performers will attempt to fill that vacuum by trying to mimic your hero.

In other words, we now live in an environment full of half-cocked Day-Lewis impersonators who strive only to show the world the sheer amount of dedication they put into their roles. 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 whole campaign 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 chose to immerse himself in the character of the Joker (in Suicide Squad) through sending “horrifying” presents to fellow cast members. These items, depending on who you ask, included dead pigs and rats to anal beads and personal hygiene products, although Leto denied the most extreme claims. Then, naturally, there is Jim Carrey, who went so deep as Andy Kaufman during Man on the Moon that filmmakers 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 Method Practitioners

The foremost Method Guy at the moment would appear to be Jeremy Strong (once an assistant to Day-Lewis), whose process during Succession was so rigorously detailed that it became the subject of a derisive New Yorker profile, including statements from people who were either concerned for his behaviour (“It’s the cost to himself concerns me,” said Brian Cox) or extremely irritated by his actions (“I recall [him] making everyone else roll their eyes,” stated an unnamed co-star).

The actor claims he ‘never intended to retire, truly’

There are numerous additional cases. Andrew Garfield abstained from sex over half a year while preparing for Silence. Leonardo DiCaprio slept in a dead animal during The Revenant. There’s a fighting chance that actor Austin Butler still speaks in the style of Elvis, three years after the movie’s release. Each of these instances, to some extent, is meant to invoke the dedication in which Day-Lewis takes his craft.

A Noble But Uphill Battle

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 practices. Perhaps 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 start making additional movies. Certainly we could all support that idea.