Daniel Day-Lewis Defends Himself Against Method Acting Criticism: "People Have Little Or No Understanding"

Daniel Day-Lewis dismisses misconceptions about Method acting, ᴀsserting that much of the criticism comes from people who simply don’t understand it. Day-Lewis is a three-time Oscar winner for My Left Foot (1989), There Will Be Blood (2007), and Lincoln (2012) who is known for his deeply immersive approach, which involves staying in character throughout production.

Although his commitment has clearly paid off, the Method has faced increasing criticism in recent years from those who consider it either unhealthy or overly extreme. During a wide-ranging discussion at the BFI London Film Festival (via Variety), Daniel Day-Lewis challenged those ideas after an audience member inquired about his approach to acting, 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 further clarified that practicing Method acting doesn’t imply that “you’re sealed off from experiencing” your real life. Instead, it means that “you’re in a self-contained experience of your own.” Day-Lewis recently returned to acting after an eight-year hiatus with Anemone, which he co-wrote with his son, Ronan Day-Lewis, who also made his directorial debut.

The movie marks his first role since his sixth Oscar-nominated performance in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Phantom Thread (2017), after which he had announced his retirement. During the discussion, Day-Lewis also looked back on My Left Foot, a film that proved to be a turning point in both his career and his approach to acting. In the movie, he played renowned Irish writer and painter Christy Brown, who had cerebral palsy and could only use his left foot to work.

Day-Lewis explained that My Left Foot, and the extended preparation period he had while the film’s financing came together, were what truly shaped his acting method. During that time, he fully immersed himself in the character’s world, learning to navigate life in a wheelchair and practicing writing and painting exclusively with his left foot:

Because there was no money when I signed up for it, I moved over to Dublin on this wing and a prayer. 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.

Elaborating on why he commits so intensely to researching his roles, Daniel Day-Lewis remarked, “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 as you’re humanly able to what it feels like to be inside of that experience.”