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It’s been a long while since anyone saw or heard from Daniel Day-Lewis. Following his announcement in 2017 declaring he would cease to work as an actor, prior to the release of The Phantom Thread, Day-Lewis withdrew from the spotlight. However, in his absence, his reputation has only grown.

The Legend Surrounding His Method

Primarily, this reputation revolves around his favored style of working. As someone known for disappears into his characters – for example, during the Lincoln biopic, he had Steven Spielberg call him “Mr. President” throughout the shoot – audiences has grown more fascinated with how he works. Is it true he really send messages to co-star Sally Field as Abraham Lincoln? Was it accurate that he consumed solely game he hunted during The Last of the Mohicans? And did he demand receiving food via spoon for My Left Foot?

Madness in their method: have we lost interest with actorly excess?

Currently, Daniel Day-Lewis is back in the limelight, with some hesitation, promoting his latest movie Anemone. He is taking this chance to express his anger regarding how method acting is perceived. “I am somewhat annoyed nowadays when I hear various individuals gobbling off and using phrases like ‘gone full method’, which I think is meant to imply that a person’s behaving like a lunatic in a drastic way,” he stated to the New York Times. “People tends to focus on the less important details of the work, and those details always seem to involve some sort of self-punishment or an experience that imposes upon oneself extreme unease or mental instability. However, in the career for a performer, it has to mainly focus on the internal work.”

A World Full of Followers

To be honest, it appears like Day-Lewis has emerged from his retreat only to discover aghast at the acting community that has been created in his image. If you’re regarded as among the best actors to ever work, and your process involves headbutting a dummy until you break your nose (for Gangs of New York) or enduring two days in isolation without food or water (for In the Name of the Father), it’s natural that fellow performers will attempt to fill that vacuum by imitating your hero.

In other words, we exist in an environment populated by imperfect imitators of Day-Lewis who want nothing more than to show the world the sheer amount of effort they put into a character. On the milder side of the pool we have people like Lady Gaga, who was so desperate to win an Oscar for House of Gucci that she spent the whole campaign attempting to persuade people that she transformed into an Italian native over 18 months as preparation.

Then we have Jared Leto, who chose to deeply embed himself in the character of the Joker (for Suicide Squad) through sending “horrifying” presents to fellow cast members. These items, depending on who you ask, range from dead pigs and rats to anal beads and used condoms, although Leto denied the most extreme claims. Then, naturally, we have Jim Carrey, who went so deep as Andy Kaufman for Man on the Moon that they succeeded to get a feature-length documentary out of B-roll of him causing difficulties to the utmost for everyone around him.

Contemporary Method Practitioners

The main Method Guy at the moment would appear to be Jeremy Strong (formerly an assistant to Day-Lewis), whose approach while filming Succession was so rigorously detailed that it became the basis of a derisive New Yorker profile, full of quotes from individuals who were worried about his conduct (“It’s the cost on himself concerns me,” said Brian Cox) or annoyed beyond all measure by it (“I recall him causing others roll their eyes,” stated an anonymous cast member).

Daniel Day-Lewis claims he ‘did not plan to retire, truly’

We have so many other examples. Andrew Garfield went celibate for six months for Silence. Leonardo DiCaprio rested inside a dead animal during The Revenant. There’s a fighting chance that Austin Butler continues to talk in the style of Elvis, three years after that film came out. All of this, in part, is meant to invoke the seriousness with which Day-Lewis takes his craft.

An Admirable Yet Challenging Battle

Moreover, although his rebuttal against method detractors could be commendable, a brief promotional cycle might not be enough to alter perceptions, let alone their practices. Maybe if he wants to remind people what method acting is, or to show them what it can achieve, then the optimal strategy for Day-Lewis is to just begin producing more films. Surely we could all get behind that.