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It’s been quite some time since anyone saw or heard from Daniel Day-Lewis. After he statement in 2017 declaring 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 Legend Surrounding His Method

Primarily, this reputation revolves around his preferred style of working. Being an actor known for disappears into the roles he plays – for instance, while filming Lincoln, he had Steven Spielberg call him “Mr. President” for the entire production – the world has grown more fascinated with how he works. Did he actually sent texts to Sally Field in character as Lincoln? Did he only eat animals he’d killed for The Last of the Mohicans? And did he insist on being spoon-fed for My Left Foot?

Extreme acting methods: have we fallen out of love with over-the-top performances?

Currently, Daniel Day-Lewis has returned to public attention, somewhat reluctantly, for his new film Anemone. He is taking this chance to express his anger regarding how method acting is viewed. “I am somewhat annoyed these days when I hear all kinds of people talking carelessly and using phrases like ‘fully embraced the Method’, which seems is meant to imply that a person’s acting insane in an extreme fashion,” he stated to the New York Times. “People often concentrate on the less important aspects of acting, and those details always seem to involve some form of self-flagellation or an experience that causes 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

Frankly, this sounds like Day-Lewis has come out from his retreat and found himself aghast at the acting community that has been created in his image. If you’re regarded as among the best performers to ever work, and your process involves headbutting a dummy until you break your nose (in Gangs of New York) or spending 48 hours in isolation deprived of sustenance (during In the Name of the Father), it’s natural that fellow performers will want to fill that vacuum by imitating your hero.

Essentially, we exist in an environment full of half-cocked imitators of Day-Lewis who strive only to show the world the sheer amount of dedication they invest in their roles. At the shallow end of this trend 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 attempting to persuade people that she became an Italian native over 18 months in preparation.

Then we have Jared Leto, who chose to immerse himself into the role of the Joker (for Suicide Squad) through sending “disturbing” gifts to his castmates. These, depending on who you ask, included dead pigs and rats to intimate objects and used condoms, though Leto denied the most extreme claims. And then, of course, we have Jim Carrey, who went so deep into Andy Kaufman for Man on the Moon that filmmakers literally managed to get a feature-length documentary out of B-roll of him making life as impossible as he could for his colleagues.

The Modern Followers of the Method

The main practitioner of the Method currently seems to be Jeremy Strong (once an assistant to Day-Lewis), whose approach while filming Succession was so rigorously detailed that it became the basis of a critical 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 annoyed beyond all measure by his actions (“I recall [him] making everyone else to react with exasperation,” stated an anonymous cast member).

The actor claims he ‘did not plan to stop acting, really’

We have so many other examples. Andrew Garfield abstained from sex over half a year for Silence. Leonardo DiCaprio slept in an animal carcass during The Revenant. There’s a fighting chance that actor Austin Butler still speaks like Elvis Presley, three years after the movie’s release. Each of these instances, in part, is meant to invoke the dedication with which Day-Lewis approaches his work.

A Noble But Uphill Battle

And, although his rebuttal to critics of the Method could be commendable, a short publicity tour might not be enough to alter perceptions, not to mention their behaviour. Maybe if he wants to remind people the true essence of the Method, or to show them its potential results, then Day-Lewis’s best bet is to just start making additional movies. Certainly everyone would get behind that.