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It has been a long while since anyone saw or heard from Daniel Day-Lewis. After he announcement in 2017 that he would cease to work as an actor, just before the debut of The Phantom Thread, Day-Lewis quietly faded from view. Yet, during his hiatus, his reputation expanded further.

The Mythos of His Acting Method

Primarily, this legend revolves around his preferred approach to roles. Being an actor who famously immerses himself in his characters – for example, during Lincoln, reportedly asked the director address him as “Mr President” throughout the shoot – the world has grown more fascinated with how he works. Is it true he really send texts to Sally Field as Abraham Lincoln? Was it accurate that he only eat animals he’d killed for The Last of the Mohicans? And did he demand receiving food via spoon for My Left Foot?

Extreme acting methods: has the public fallen out of love with over-the-top performances?

Currently, Day-Lewis has returned to public attention, with some hesitation, for his new film Anemone. He is taking this chance to vocalise his frustration at how method acting is viewed. “I am somewhat annoyed these days when I hear various individuals gobbling off and using phrases like ‘fully embraced the Method’, which I think is meant to imply that a person’s acting insane in a drastic way,” he stated to a major publication. “Everyone tends to focus on superficial details of the work, and those details always seem to involve some sort of self-punishment or an experience that imposes upon oneself a severe discomfort or mental instability. However, in the career of an actor, it has to principally be about the internal work.”

An Industry Full of Followers

Frankly, this sounds as if the actor has emerged from his retreat and found himself aghast at the acting community that has developed in his image. When you are regarded as one of the greatest performers to ever work, and your approach includes headbutting a dummy to the point of injury (in Gangs of New York) or enduring two days in isolation without food or water (during In the Name of the Father), then it stands to reason that other actors will want to emulate that example by trying to mimic your hero.

In other words, we exist in an environment full of imperfect Day-Lewis impersonators who want nothing more than to show the world the sheer amount of effort they put into a character. At the shallow end of the pool there are performers such as Lady Gaga, who was so desperate to win an Oscar with House of Gucci that she dedicated the whole campaign attempting to persuade people that she became an Italian native over 18 months as preparation.

Additionally, there is Jared Leto, who decided to deeply embed himself in the character of the Joker (for Suicide Squad) by sending “disturbing” presents to fellow cast members. These, depending on who you ask, included deceased animals to anal beads and used condoms, although Leto denied the most extreme claims. And then, of course, we have Jim Carrey, who immersed himself so fully into Andy Kaufman during Man on the Moon that filmmakers succeeded in creating a full-length documentary out of B-roll of him making life as impossible as he could for his colleagues.

Contemporary Method Practitioners

The foremost Method Guy currently would appear 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 derisive New Yorker profile, full of quotes from individuals who were either concerned about his conduct (“The toll to himself that worries me,” said co-star Brian Cox) or annoyed beyond all measure by it (“I recall [him] making everyone else roll their eyes,” stated an unnamed co-star).

The actor says he ‘never intended to retire, truly’

We have numerous additional cases. 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 actor Austin Butler still speaks like Elvis Presley, three years after the movie’s release. All of this, in part, aims to evoke the dedication in which Day-Lewis approaches his craft.

An Admirable But Uphill Battle

And, although his rebuttal to critics of the Method might be noble, a short publicity tour may prove insufficient to change anyone’s mind, let alone their practices. Maybe if he wants to remind people what method acting is, or to demonstrate what it can achieve, then the optimal strategy for Day-Lewis is to simply start making more films. Certainly we could all support that idea.