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It’s been quite some time since anyone caught a glimpse of Daniel Day-Lewis. After he statement in 2017 declaring he would no longer work as an actor, just before the release of Phantom Thread, Day-Lewis quietly faded from view. However, in his absence, his reputation has only grown.

The Mythos of His Acting Method

Largely, this reputation revolves around his favored approach to roles. Being an actor known for disappears into the roles he plays – for instance, while filming Lincoln, he had the director address him as “Mr President” throughout the shoot – the world has grown increasingly obsessed with how he works. Is it true he actually sent messages to co-star Sally Field in character as Lincoln? Was it accurate that he only eat game he hunted during Last of the Mohicans? Did he demand being spoon-fed while filming My Left Foot?

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

Now, Day-Lewis is back in the limelight, with some hesitation, promoting his latest movie Anemone. He is taking this chance to vocalise his frustration at how the Method technique is viewed. “I am somewhat annoyed these days to hear all kinds of people gobbling off and saying things like ‘fully embraced the Method’, which seems suggests that a person’s acting insane in an extreme fashion,” he told a major publication. “People tends to focus on superficial details of the work, and those details typically include some form of self-flagellation or a situation that imposes upon oneself a severe discomfort or psychological strain. But of course, in the life for a performer, it has to principally be about the inner transformation.”

A World Full of Followers

To be honest, this sounds like Day-Lewis has emerged from seclusion only to discover shocked by the world that has developed mirroring his methods. When you are widely considered one of the greatest actors to ever work, and your process involves striking a prop to the point of injury (for Gangs of New York) or enduring two days in isolation deprived of sustenance (during In the Name of the Father), it’s natural that fellow performers will want to emulate that example by trying to mimic your hero.

Essentially, we now live in a landscape populated by imperfect imitators of Day-Lewis who strive only to demonstrate the sheer amount of dedication they invest in a character. At the shallow end of the pool there are performers such as Lady Gaga, who was so desperate to earn an Academy Award for House of Gucci that she dedicated the whole campaign trying to convince everyone that she became an Italian native for a year and a half as preparation.

Additionally, there is Jared Leto, who chose to deeply embed himself into the role of the Joker (for Suicide Squad) through sending “horrifying” presents to fellow cast members. These items, according to various accounts, included dead pigs and rats to anal beads and personal hygiene products, though Leto denied those worst excesses. Then, of course, there is Jim Carrey, who immersed himself so fully as Andy Kaufman during Man on the Moon that they succeeded in creating a full-length documentary from behind-the-scenes footage of him causing difficulties to the utmost for everyone around him.

Contemporary Method Practitioners

The main practitioner of the Method currently seems to be Jeremy Strong (once Day-Lewis’s assistant), whose approach while filming Succession was so laboriously intensive that it formed the basis of a derisive New Yorker profile, full of quotes from people who were worried about his conduct (“The toll on himself concerns me,” said co-star Brian Cox) or extremely irritated by it (“I recall him causing others to react with exasperation,” said an unnamed co-star).

The actor claims he ‘never intended to stop acting, really’

There are numerous additional cases. Andrew Garfield went celibate for six months while preparing for Silence. Leonardo DiCaprio slept in an animal carcass for The Revenant. There’s a fighting chance that Austin Butler still speaks like Elvis Presley, years following that film came out. Each of these instances, in part, aims to evoke the seriousness with which Day-Lewis approaches his craft.

An Admirable Yet Challenging Battle

And, although his rebuttal against method detractors could be commendable, a short publicity tour may prove insufficient to alter perceptions, not to mention their practices. Maybe if he wishes to remind people what method acting is, or to show them what it can achieve, then Day-Lewis’s best bet is to simply start making more films. Surely everyone would get behind that.