Back in 2017, at the age of 60, Daniel Day-Lewis announced somewhat out of the blue that he was officially retiring from acting. All he had left to attend to was promoting a film he already had in the can — Paul Thomas Anderson’s Phantom Thread, for which DDL was nominated once again for a Best Actor Oscar (which he lost to Gary Oldman’s prosthetics in Darkest Hour). On the whole, it was a weird move from DDL. He already worked on fewer projects than most actors, with several years going between films. His was not the Nicole Kidman approach, so it’s not like anyone would have immediately said, “Why aren’t you working?!” I guess my point is, it seemed like a limiting move to so publicly declare a chapter ended. Especially because it turned out DDL wasn’t in fact finished! Last year we learned he would be starring in Anemone, a film he cowrote with his son Ronan who makes his directorial debut with the feature. Anemone just screened at the London Film Festival, where DDL fielded questions from an audience about his practice of the infamous Method acting:

The accomplished actor — a three-time best actor Oscar winner for “My Left Foot” (1989), “There Will Be Blood” (2007) and “Lincoln” (2012) — is known for his immersive process, devoting himself to staying in character throughout filming. Despite how it’s worked out for him, going Method has received a fair amount of pushback in recent years from those who believe it to be unhealthy — or just plain silly.

However, Day-Lewis pushed back against these notions after an audience member asked about his acting process, saying: “All the recent commentary in the last few years about Method acting is invariably from people who have little or no understanding of what it actually involves. It’s almost as if it’s some specious science that we’re involved in, or a cult. But it’s just a way of freeing yourself so that the spontaneity, when you are working with your colleagues in front of the camera, that you are free to respond in any way that you’ll move to in that moment.”

Day-Lewis went on to explain that going Method doesn’t mean “you’re sealed off from experiencing” your own real life, but rather that “you’re in a self-contained experience of your own.” He continued: “But really, if you’ve done your work, you should be free to accept whatever passes through you.”

…Before discussing both “Anemone” and “Phantom Thread,” Day-Lewis reflected on Jim Sheridan’s “My Left Foot,” which marked a pivotal moment in both his career and acting process. … “Because there was no money when I signed up for it, I moved over to Dublin on this wing and a prayer,” he said. “And there was all the time in the world. I started to work with these wonderful people, I had a little house and I had my paints and my wheelchair and everything I needed. I guess I had a couple of months before we finally scraped enough money to do the first few scenes and I thought: I’m never not going to work like this again.”

Explaining why he takes his research for roles to such extremes, Day-Lewis said: “Look, it’s very easy to describe what I do as if I’m out of my mind. Plenty of people have been happy to do that, but it just makes sense to me … You have an obligation to try to understand as far you’re humanly able to what it feels like to be inside of that experience.”

[From Variety]

It’s time for me to show my cards here: I actually studied for years at the Lee Strasberg Institute, Strasberg being the influential 20th century acting teacher who put the “method” on the map. Long (loooong) gone are the days when I feel defensive about it, but it always struck me, as DDL suggests, that the common conception of the Method is actually a misconception. At no point was it meant to be, “Stay in character the whole time! Make people call you by your character’s name!” or whatever other d-ck shenanigans Jared Leto does on set. What I was taught, was that the Method was a network of exercises designed to help an actor behave truthfully under imaginary circumstances. That’s it! I give credit to DDL here for saying his piece so clearly and simply. The way he describes his approach to the Method, it does indeed just make sense. Obviously the more you’ve done your homework, the more second nature it is, the more you’ll be freed up to respond in the moment, as DDL says. Also, I think there’s something telling — culturally or generationally, I’m not quite sure — about people viewing the undertaking of a lot of research as “extreme.”

Photos credit: Cover Images, Ian West/PA Images/INSTARimages, Raphael Pour-Hashemi/Backgrid, Marion Curtis/StarPix for Focus Features/INSTARimages