Daniel Day-Lewis has spent decades cementing his reputation as one of cinema’s most devoted performers, the kind of actor who disappears so completely into roles like There Will Be Blood, Lincoln, My Left Foot, and the 2025 movie release Anemone, that you forget there’s a person behind the performance. Yet for all the awards and reverence, he’s always seemed a little uneasy about the “method actor” label people love to toss around. Which is why I can’t get enough of him lately, calling out folks “gobbling off” about his process like they’ve got it all figured out.
In his recent New York Times interview, as part of that larger profile on his return to acting after announcing his retirement eight years ago, Day-Lewis pushed back hard on the modern misuse of “Method." Specifically, on how people casually toss around phrases like “gone full Method,” as though acting and lunacy are interchangeable. He told the outlet:
