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It’s been a long while since anyone saw or heard from Daniel Day-Lewis. After he statement in 2017 declaring he would cease to pursue acting, prior to the debut of The Phantom Thread, Day-Lewis quietly faded from view. However, in his absence, his legend expanded further.

The Mythos Surrounding His Acting Method

Largely, this legend centers on his preferred style of working. Being an actor known for disappears into his characters – for example, while filming the Lincoln biopic, he had the director address him as “Mr President” for the entire production – audiences has grown more fascinated with how he works. Is it true he actually sent texts to Sally Field in character as Lincoln? Was it accurate that he consumed solely game he hunted for The Last of the Mohicans? And did he demand being spoon-fed for My Left Foot?

Madness in their method: has the public fallen out of love with actorly excess?

Currently, Daniel Day-Lewis is back to public attention, with some hesitation, for his new film Anemone. And he is taking this chance to express his frustration regarding how method acting is perceived. “I’m a little cross nowadays when I hear various individuals talking carelessly and saying things like ‘fully embraced the Method’, which I think is meant to imply that a person’s behaving like a lunatic in a drastic way,” he stated to a major publication. “People tends to focus on superficial aspects of acting, and these elements always seem to involve some form of self-punishment or an experience that causes extreme unease or mental instability. However, in the life of an actor, it has to principally be about the internal work.”

An Industry Full of Followers

To be honest, this sounds as if Day-Lewis has come out 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 actors in history, and your process involves striking a prop to the point of injury (for Gangs of New York) or enduring 48 hours in isolation deprived of sustenance (for 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 a landscape populated by imperfect Day-Lewis impersonators who want nothing more than to demonstrate the sheer amount of effort they invest in a character. 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 for a year and a half as preparation.

Then we have Jared Leto, who decided to immerse himself in the character of the Joker (for Suicide Squad) by sending “horrifying” presents to his castmates. These, according to various accounts, included dead pigs and rats to intimate objects and used condoms, though Leto denied the most extreme claims. Then, of course, we have Jim Carrey, who immersed himself so fully as Andy Kaufman during Man on the Moon that they 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.

Contemporary Followers of the Method

The foremost Method Guy at the moment seems to be Jeremy Strong (once an assistant to Day-Lewis), whose process while filming Succession was so rigorously detailed that it became the subject of a derisive magazine feature, full of quotes from people who were either concerned for his behaviour (“The toll on himself concerns me,” said Brian Cox) or extremely irritated by it (“I remember [him] making everyone else roll their eyes,” said an anonymous cast member).

The actor says he ‘did not plan to retire, truly’

We have numerous additional cases. Andrew Garfield went celibate for six months while preparing for Silence. Leonardo DiCaprio slept in an animal carcass during The Revenant. It’s quite possible that Austin Butler still speaks like Elvis Presley, years following that film came out. All of this, to some extent, is meant to invoke the dedication in which Day-Lewis takes his craft.

An Admirable Yet Challenging Fight

And, although his rebuttal to critics of the Method might be noble, a brief promotional cycle might not be enough to alter perceptions, let alone their behaviour. Perhaps if he wishes to remind people the true essence of the Method, or to show them its potential results, then the optimal strategy for Day-Lewis is to just start making additional movies. Surely everyone would support that idea.