The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act

by Isaac Butler

The most celebrated inheritor of De Niro’s techniques is the now retired Daniel Day-Lewis. To many, Day-Lewis is synonymous with the Method, but while preparing to play Christy Brown in My Left Foot, he told the New York Times “I don’t follow the Method. I don’t even have a normal way of working. I tend to be suspicious of all systems of acting.” If Day-Lewis represents the sublime form of De Niro’s process, examples of its more ridiculous versions abound. The promotional machine for the 2016 action blockbuster Suicide Squad generated numerous stories about Jared Leto, whose efforts to capture the Joker’s anarchic sensibility reportedly included sending his co-stars a dead pig, a live rat, dildos, and used condoms. Although Leto later said the used condom story “was total bullshit” and accused the press of disseminating it for clicks, he was one of the people spreading the story prior to the film’s release.