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It has been a long while since the public caught a glimpse of Daniel Day-Lewis. After he statement in 2017 that he would cease to pursue acting, just before the debut of The Phantom Thread, Day-Lewis withdrew from the spotlight. Yet, in his absence, his reputation expanded further.

The Mythos Surrounding His Acting Method

Largely, this legend centers on his preferred approach to roles. As someone who famously immerses himself in the roles he plays – for example, during the Lincoln biopic, reportedly asked the director call him “Mr. President” throughout the shoot – the world has grown increasingly obsessed with how he works. Did he really send texts to Sally Field in character as Lincoln? Was it accurate that he consumed solely game he hunted during The Last of the Mohicans? Did he insist on receiving food via spoon for My Left Foot?

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

Now, Day-Lewis has returned in the limelight, with some hesitation, for his new film Anemone. And he is using this to express his anger at 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 someone is acting insane in a drastic way,” he stated to the New York Times. “People often concentrate on superficial aspects of acting, and those details typically include some form of self-flagellation or a situation that imposes upon oneself a severe discomfort or mental instability. However, in the career of an actor, it must principally be about the internal work.”

A World Full of Followers

To be honest, it appears like Day-Lewis has come out from his retreat and found himself shocked by the acting community that has been created in his image. When you are regarded as one of the greatest actors to ever work, and your approach includes headbutting a dummy until you break your nose (for Gangs of New York) or spending two days in isolation without food or water (for In the Name of the Father), it’s natural that other actors will attempt to fill that vacuum by imitating your hero.

Essentially, we now live in an environment populated by imperfect Day-Lewis impersonators who want nothing more than to demonstrate the sheer amount of effort they invest in their roles. At the shallow end of the pool we have people like Lady Gaga, who was so desperate to win an Oscar for House of Gucci that she dedicated the entire promotion attempting to persuade people that she became functionally Italian over 18 months as preparation.

Then we have Jared Leto, who chose to deeply embed himself in the character as 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 intimate objects and used condoms, though Leto denied those worst excesses. And then, naturally, there is Jim Carrey, who immersed himself so fully as Andy Kaufman during Man on the Moon that they succeeded to get a full-length documentary out of B-roll of him making life as impossible as he could for everyone around him.

The Modern Followers of the Method

The main Method Guy currently would appear to be Jeremy Strong (formerly an assistant to Day-Lewis), whose process during Succession was so laboriously intensive that it formed the subject of a derisive New Yorker profile, including statements from individuals who were worried for his behaviour (“The toll on himself that worries me,” remarked co-star Brian Cox) or extremely irritated by his actions (“I remember him causing everyone else to react with exasperation,” said an anonymous cast member).

Daniel Day-Lewis claims he ‘did not plan to stop acting, really’

We have numerous additional cases. Andrew Garfield abstained from sex over half a year while preparing for Silence. Leonardo DiCaprio slept in an animal carcass for The Revenant. There’s a fighting chance that Austin Butler continues to talk like Elvis Presley, three years after that film came out. Each of these instances, to some extent, aims to evoke the seriousness with which Day-Lewis takes his work.

An Admirable Yet Challenging Battle

And, although his rebuttal to critics of the Method might be noble, a brief promotional cycle might not be enough to alter perceptions, not to mention their practices. Perhaps if he wants to make audiences recall what method acting is, or to show them what it can achieve, then the optimal strategy for Day-Lewis is to simply begin producing additional movies. Certainly everyone would support that idea.