![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/9e65ffd7ce319132bac157373ce35c6050-Daniel-Day-Lewis-Brian-Cox.rsquare.w330.jpg\")
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\n A very British scandal.
\n Photo: Getty Images\n <\/p>\n
A fearsome war has begun in the United Kingdom over Method acting, and the opposing armies both have an esteemed British actor \u2014 Sir Daniel Day Lewis and OBE recipient Brian Cox \u2014 leading the charge. The irascible Cox has spent years prodding Day-Lewis in interviews over his acting techniques, largely as a way of explaining his irritation with Succession<\/a> co-star (and Day-Lewis\u2019s fellow Method actor) Jeremy Strong. Now, Day-Lewis, who is currently promoting his son\u2019s film Anemone<\/a>, wants Cox to get off his pulpit. \u201cListen, I worked with Brian Cox once and got somehow drawn into this handbags-at-dawn conflict inadvertently,\u201d Day-Lewis told The Big Issue<\/a> in a November 3 interview, referring to their work together on the 1997 film The Boxer. \u201cBrian is a very fine actor who\u2019s done extraordinary work. As a result, he\u2019s been given a soapbox \u2026 which he shows no sign of climbing down from. Any time he wants to talk about it, I\u2019m easy to find.\u201d<\/p>\n It tracks that Day-Lewis might take the chance to respond to his former co-star: Cox has described Strong\u2019s acting process as \u201cfucking annoying\u201d and gone on to compare him to Day-Lewis. While the Method, <\/a>developed by the Russian dramatist Konstantin Stanislavski and brought to America by Lee Strasburg, calls on actors to use real emotion to portray characters\u2019 subconscious, in stereotype, both Cox and the world use it to mean \u201coverserious actor who stays in character for months on end and gets<\/a> really<\/a> weird<\/a> about it.\u201d \u201cTo me, Daniel Day-Lewis got worn out at 55 and decided to retire because [he] couldn\u2019t go on doing that every day,\u201d Cox told Seth Meyers on Late Night<\/a> in 2021. \u201cIt\u2019s too consuming, and I do worry about it. But the result \u2014 what everyone says about Jeremy \u2014 the result is always extraordinary and excellent.\u201d Yes, extraordinary, excellent, and also, per a 2022 Deadline<\/a> interview with Cox, \u201cexhausting for the rest of us.\u201d<\/p>\n Cox has also theorized that Strong\u2019s use of the technique is because of DDL. \u201cOf course, Jeremy was Dan Day-Lewis\u2019s assistant. So he\u2019s learned all that stuff from Dan,\u201d he told Variety<\/a> in 2023. But the boss doesn\u2019t see it the same way. \u201cIf I thought during our work together I\u2019d interfered with his working process, I\u2019d be appalled. But I don\u2019t think it was like that. So I don\u2019t know where the fuck that came from,\u201d Day-Lewis told The Big Issue. \u201cJeremy Strong is a very fine actor, I don\u2019t know how he goes about things, but I don\u2019t feel responsible in any way for that.\u201d<\/p>\n And the Method is innocent, too. \u201cI just don\u2019t like it being misrepresented to the extent it has been,\u201d Day-Lewis said. \u201cI can\u2019t think of a single commentator who\u2019s gobbed off about the Method that has any understanding of how it works and the intention behind it.\u201d He added that \u201cI choose to stay and splash around, rather than jump in and out or play practical jokes with whoopee cushions between takes or whatever people think is how you should behave as an actor.\u201d Cox is never one to turn down the opportunity<\/a> to respond. We await his inevitable return to his soapbox with bated breath.<\/p>\n Related<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A very British scandal. Photo: Getty Images A fearsome war has begun in the United Kingdom over Method…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":242943,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[11511,68231,61761,6491,37771,96,92335,102080,102079,2839,50,59671,102078,391,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-242942","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-acting","tag-anemone","tag-brian-cox","tag-celebrities","tag-daniel-day-lewis","tag-entertainment","tag-jeremy-strong","tag-jeremy-strong-is-involved","tag-methods-to-the-madness","tag-movies","tag-news","tag-succession","tag-the-boxer","tag-tv","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242942","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=242942"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242942\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/242943"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=242942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=242942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=242942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}