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It’s been quite some time since anyone saw or heard from Daniel Day-Lewis. Following his statement in 2017 that he would cease to work as an actor, just before the release of Phantom Thread, Day-Lewis withdrew from the spotlight. Yet, during his hiatus, his reputation has only grown.

The Mythos of His Acting Method

Largely, this reputation centers on his preferred approach to roles. Being an actor known for immerses himself in his characters – for example, during the Lincoln biopic, reportedly asked the director address him as “Mr. President” throughout the shoot – audiences has grown more fascinated with how he works. Did he actually sent texts to Sally Field as Abraham Lincoln? Did he consumed solely game he hunted for Last of the Mohicans? Did he insist on being spoon-fed for My Left Foot?

Extreme acting methods: have we fallen out of love with actorly excess?

Currently, Daniel Day-Lewis is back to public attention, with some hesitation, promoting his latest movie Anemone. And he is taking this chance to vocalise his frustration at how method acting is perceived. “I’m a little cross nowadays when I hear all kinds of people gobbling off and using phrases like ‘fully embraced the Method’, which seems is meant to imply that a person’s acting insane in a drastic way,” he stated to a major publication. “People often concentrate on superficial aspects of acting, and those details typically include some sort of self-punishment or a situation that causes extreme unease or mental instability. But of course, in the life for a performer, it must principally be about the internal work.”

An Industry Full of Followers

Frankly, it appears as if Day-Lewis has emerged from seclusion and found himself aghast at the acting community that has developed mirroring his methods. If you’re widely considered among the best actors in history, and your process involves striking a prop to the point of injury (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 emulate that example by trying to mimic their idol.

Essentially, we exist in an environment populated by imperfect imitators of Day-Lewis who want nothing more than to demonstrate the extensive degree of effort they put into their roles. At the shallow end of this trend we have people like Lady Gaga, who was so desperate to earn an Academy Award for House of Gucci that she spent the whole campaign attempting to persuade people that she became functionally Italian for a year and a half in preparation.

Then we have Jared Leto, who chose to deeply embed himself in the character of the Joker (in Suicide Squad) through sending “horrifying” gifts to fellow cast members. These items, depending on who you ask, included deceased animals to anal beads and used condoms, though Leto denied those worst excesses. And then, naturally, there is Jim Carrey, who immersed himself so fully into Andy Kaufman during Man on the Moon that filmmakers succeeded in creating a feature-length documentary from behind-the-scenes footage of him causing difficulties as impossible as he could for everyone around him.

The Modern Method Practitioners

The foremost Method Guy currently would appear to be Jeremy Strong (formerly Day-Lewis’s assistant), whose approach during Succession was so laboriously intensive that it formed the basis of a derisive New Yorker profile, full of quotes from individuals who were worried for his behaviour (“It’s the cost to himself that worries me,” remarked Brian Cox) or extremely irritated by it (“I remember [him] making others to react with exasperation,” said an unnamed co-star).

Daniel Day-Lewis says he ‘never intended to retire, truly’

We have so many other examples. Andrew Garfield went celibate over half a year for Silence. Leonardo DiCaprio rested inside a dead animal during The Revenant. It’s quite possible that Austin Butler continues to talk in the style of Elvis, years following that film came out. Each of these instances, to some extent, aims to evoke the seriousness in which Day-Lewis approaches his craft.

An Admirable Yet Challenging Battle

And, although his rebuttal to critics of the Method could be commendable, a short publicity tour may prove insufficient to change anyone’s mind, let alone their behaviour. Maybe if he wants 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 more films. Surely we could all get behind that.