Daniel Day-Lewis vs. Brian Cox: time to settle the score!
The actor with three Oscars is fed up with the star of Succession pointing the finger at his working methods and attacking Jeremy Strong.
The legendary actor There Will Be Blood comes out of his silence. And the gloves.
In a rare interview given to the British magazine The Big IssueDaniel Day-Lewis returns to the controversy surrounding “Method acting” – this extreme approach to acting that we often associate with him – and the repeated criticisms of Brian Cox, who recently targeted him.
“I once worked with Brian Cox and I found myself, against my will, embroiled in this rag-picker conflict,” says Day-Lewis.
“He is a very great actor, who has done extraordinary work. As a result, we have given him a platform… which he does not seem ready to give up. Let him know that I am easy to find if he wants to talk about it…”
For several years, Brian Cox has been increasing his number of outings against the “method”, which he considers “fucking annoying”, often taking Jeremy Strong, his partner in Succession. The Scottish actor even insinuated that Strong owed his style to Day-Lewis, whose assistant he was. An assertion that the person concerned sharply brushes aside: “If I had interfered in his work process, I would be appalled. But I don’t think that’s the case. So I don’t know where this shit came from. Jeremy Strong is a remarkable actor, I don’t know how he works, but I don’t feel responsible for that at all.”
Daniel Day-Lewis, who retired from cinema in 2017 after Phantom Thread but made a notable comeback this year, for his son’s first film, says he is especially irritated by the way in which “Method acting” is caricatured: “I don’t see a single commentator who has the slightest idea of what the method really is, or its intention. It’s reduced to clichés like ‘he lived in a cell for six months’. These are the least important details.”
For the 67-year-old actor, there is nothing mystical or crazy about this approach to acting: “It’s simply a way of freeing yourself, to offer your partners a living human being, with whom they can really interact. That’s all. So yes, it pisses me off this ‘he went full Method’. Because it’s always associated with a form of madness. I just choose to stay in the water and splash around in it, rather than jumping in and coming out making jokes between takes.”
