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It has been quite some time since the public saw or heard from Daniel Day-Lewis. Following his statement in 2017 that he would no longer work as an actor, prior to the debut of Phantom Thread, Day-Lewis quietly faded from view. However, in his absence, his reputation expanded further.

The Legend of His Method

Largely, this legend centers on his preferred approach to roles. Being an actor who famously immerses himself in the roles he plays – for instance, during the Lincoln biopic, he had Steven Spielberg address him as “Mr President” throughout the shoot – audiences has grown increasingly obsessed with his process. Is it true he actually sent messages to co-star Sally Field as Abraham Lincoln? Was it accurate that he consumed solely animals he’d killed during Last of the Mohicans? Did he insist on being spoon-fed for My Left Foot?

Madness in their method: has the public lost interest with actorly excess?

Now, Daniel Day-Lewis has returned to public attention, with some hesitation, promoting his latest movie Anemone. He is taking this chance to express his frustration at how the Method technique is perceived. “I am somewhat annoyed nowadays when I hear various individuals talking carelessly and using phrases like ‘gone full method’, which seems suggests that someone is acting insane in an extreme fashion,” he stated to a major publication. “People tends to focus on the less important details of the work, and those details typically include some form of self-punishment or an experience that causes extreme unease or mental instability. However, in the life for a performer, it must principally be about the inner transformation.”

A World Full of Followers

To be honest, this sounds as if the actor has emerged from his retreat and found himself shocked by the acting community that has been created in his image. When you are regarded as among the best performers to ever work, and your approach includes striking a prop to the point of injury (for Gangs of New York) or spending two days in solitary confinement without food or water (for In the Name of the Father), then it stands to reason that fellow performers will want to fill that vacuum by imitating your hero.

In other words, we now live in a landscape full of half-cocked imitators of Day-Lewis who want nothing more than to demonstrate the extensive degree of effort they put into their roles. At the shallow end of the pool we have people like Lady Gaga, who was so desperate to win an Oscar with House of Gucci that she spent the entire promotion attempting to persuade people that she transformed into functionally Italian for a year and a half in preparation.

Then we have Jared Leto, who decided to deeply embed himself into the role of the Joker (in Suicide Squad) through sending “horrifying” gifts to his castmates. These, depending on who you ask, included deceased animals to anal beads and personal hygiene products, although the actor refuted those worst excesses. Then, naturally, there is Jim Carrey, who went so deep into Andy Kaufman for Man on the Moon that filmmakers succeeded to get a feature-length documentary from behind-the-scenes footage of him making life as impossible as he could for everyone around him.

Contemporary Followers of the Method

The foremost Method Guy currently would appear to be Jeremy Strong (formerly an assistant to Day-Lewis), whose approach while filming Succession was so laboriously intensive that it became the subject of a derisive New Yorker profile, full of quotes from people who were worried about his conduct (“It’s the cost to himself concerns me,” said co-star Brian Cox) or extremely irritated by it (“I recall [him] making others roll their eyes,” said an unnamed co-star).

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

We have so many other examples. Andrew Garfield went celibate for six months while preparing for Silence. Leonardo DiCaprio rested inside a dead animal for The Revenant. There’s a fighting chance that Austin Butler continues to talk like Elvis Presley, three years after that film came out. All of this, to some extent, aims to evoke the seriousness in which Day-Lewis approaches his craft.

An Admirable But Uphill Battle

And, while his fightback to critics of the Method might be noble, a short publicity tour may prove insufficient to change anyone’s mind, not to mention their behaviour. Maybe if he wishes 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. Surely everyone would support that idea.