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It has been a long while since the public saw or heard from the acclaimed actor Daniel Day-Lewis. After he announcement in 2017 declaring he would no longer work as an actor, prior to the release of The Phantom Thread, the actor quietly faded from view. Yet, during his hiatus, his legend has only grown.

The Mythos of His Acting Method

Primarily, this reputation centers on his favored approach to roles. As someone known for disappears into the roles he plays – for instance, while filming the Lincoln biopic, he had the director call him “Mr President” throughout the shoot – audiences has grown more fascinated with his process. Did he really send texts to Sally Field as Abraham Lincoln? Did he only eat game he hunted during The Last of the Mohicans? And did he insist on receiving food via spoon while filming My Left Foot?

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

Now, Day-Lewis is back to public attention, somewhat reluctantly, for his new film Anemone. He is taking this chance to vocalise his anger regarding how method acting is viewed. “I’m a little cross nowadays when I hear various individuals gobbling off and using phrases like ‘gone full method’, which I think suggests that someone is behaving like a lunatic in an extreme fashion,” he told the New York Times. “Everyone tends to focus on the less important details of the work, and those details typically include some form of self-punishment or a situation that imposes upon oneself extreme unease or mental instability. However, in the life for a performer, it must principally be about the inner transformation.”

A World of Imitators

Frankly, this sounds like the actor has emerged from his retreat and found himself aghast at the world that has been created mirroring his methods. If you’re widely considered one of the greatest performers in history, and your approach includes headbutting a dummy to the point of injury (in Gangs of New York) or spending two days in solitary confinement 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 now live in a landscape populated by half-cocked imitators of Day-Lewis who strive only to demonstrate the extensive degree of dedication they put into their roles. On the milder side of this trend there are performers such as Lady Gaga, who was so desperate to win an Oscar for House of Gucci that she dedicated the whole campaign trying to convince everyone that she transformed into functionally Italian for a year and a half in preparation.

Then we have Jared Leto, who chose to immerse himself into the role as the Joker (for Suicide Squad) by sending “disturbing” gifts to his castmates. These, according to various accounts, range from deceased animals to anal beads and personal hygiene products, although the actor refuted the most extreme claims. And then, naturally, there is Jim Carrey, who immersed himself so fully into Andy Kaufman for Man on the Moon that they succeeded in creating a full-length documentary out of B-roll of him causing difficulties as impossible as he could for everyone around him.

The Modern Method Practitioners

The foremost practitioner of the Method currently would appear to be Jeremy Strong (once an assistant to Day-Lewis), whose approach while filming Succession was so laboriously intensive that it formed the subject of a derisive New Yorker profile, full of quotes from people who were either concerned for his behaviour (“The toll on himself that worries me,” remarked Brian Cox) or annoyed beyond all measure by it (“I remember [him] making everyone else roll their eyes,” stated an unnamed co-star).

The actor says he ‘never intended to stop acting, truly’

There are numerous additional cases. Andrew Garfield abstained from sex over half a year for Silence. Leonardo DiCaprio slept in an animal carcass during The Revenant. It’s quite possible that Austin Butler continues to talk in the style of Elvis, years following the movie’s release. Each of these instances, in part, is meant to invoke the seriousness in which Day-Lewis approaches his work.

A Noble Yet Challenging Fight

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. Perhaps if he wants to make audiences recall what method acting is, or to show them its potential results, then the optimal strategy for Day-Lewis is to just begin producing more films. Certainly everyone would get behind that.