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It’s been a long while since the public caught a glimpse of Daniel Day-Lewis. Following his announcement in 2017 declaring he would no longer work as an actor, just before the release of The Phantom Thread, the actor quietly faded from view. Yet, in his absence, his reputation expanded further.

The Mythos Surrounding His Method

Primarily, this reputation revolves around his favored style of working. Being an actor who famously immerses himself in the roles he plays – for example, during Lincoln, he had Steven Spielberg call him “Mr President” throughout the shoot – the world has grown more fascinated with how he works. Is it true he actually sent messages to co-star Sally Field as Abraham Lincoln? Did he only eat game he hunted for Last of the Mohicans? 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 has returned in the limelight, with some hesitation, promoting his latest movie Anemone. He is using this to express his frustration regarding how method acting is viewed. “I’m a little cross nowadays when I hear all kinds of people talking carelessly and using phrases like ‘gone full method’, which I think is meant to imply that someone is acting insane in an extreme fashion,” he told the New York Times. “People tends to focus on superficial aspects of acting, 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 for a performer, it has to principally be about the inner transformation.”

A World Full of Followers

Frankly, it appears as if the actor has come out from his retreat only to discover shocked by the world that has been created in his image. If you’re regarded as among the best actors to ever work, and your approach involves striking a prop until you break your nose (for Gangs of New York) or spending two days in solitary confinement without food or water (during In the Name of the Father), then it stands to reason that fellow performers will want to fill that vacuum by trying to mimic their idol.

In other words, we now live in a landscape full of half-cocked imitators of Day-Lewis who want nothing more than to show the world the extensive degree of effort they put into a character. At the shallow end of this trend there are performers such as Lady Gaga, who was determined to earn an Academy Award for House of Gucci that she spent the whole campaign trying to convince everyone that she became an Italian native for a year and a half in preparation.

Additionally, there is Jared Leto, who decided to immerse himself into the role of the Joker (for Suicide Squad) through sending “horrifying” gifts to fellow cast members. These items, according to various accounts, included dead pigs and rats to intimate objects and used condoms, though the actor refuted those worst excesses. Then, of course, we have Jim Carrey, who immersed himself so fully into Andy Kaufman for Man on the Moon that they succeeded to get a feature-length documentary from behind-the-scenes footage of him making life as impossible as he could for his colleagues.

The Modern Followers of the Method

The foremost Method Guy currently seems to be Jeremy Strong (formerly an assistant to Day-Lewis), whose approach during Succession was so rigorously detailed that it became the subject of a critical New Yorker profile, full of quotes from people who were worried for his behaviour (“It’s the cost to himself that worries me,” said co-star Brian Cox) or annoyed beyond all measure by his actions (“I recall [him] making everyone else to react with exasperation,” said an unnamed co-star).

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

There are so many other examples. Andrew Garfield went celibate for six months for Silence. Leonardo DiCaprio slept in an animal carcass during The Revenant. There’s a fighting chance that actor Austin Butler continues to talk like Elvis Presley, years following that film came out. Each of these instances, to some extent, is meant to invoke the seriousness in which Day-Lewis approaches his work.

A Noble Yet Challenging Fight

And, while his fightback to critics of the Method could be commendable, a short publicity tour may prove insufficient to change anyone’s mind, let alone their practices. Perhaps if he wishes to remind people what method acting is, or to demonstrate what it can achieve, then Day-Lewis’s best bet is to just start making more films. Surely everyone would get behind that.