He’s been ‘given a soapbox’

Clash of the titans. 

Daniel Day-Lewis is slamming Brian Cox for the latter’s disparaging comments about method acting. 

“Listen, I worked with Brian Cox once and got somehow drawn into this handbags-at-dawn conflict inadvertently,” Day-Lewis, 68, said in an interview with the UK’s Big Issue published Nov. 3.

“The Last of the Mohicans” actor and the “Succession” star, 79, were in the 1997 movie “The Boxer” together. 

“Brian is a very fine actor who’s done extraordinary work. As a result, he’s been given a soapbox… which he shows no sign of climbing down from. Any time he wants to talk about it, I’m easy to find,” Day-Lewis continued. “If I thought during our work together I’d interfered with his working process, I’d be appalled. But I don’t think it was like that. So I don’t know where the f–k that came from.”

The Oscar winner is famously a method actor, remaining in character and often going to extreme lengths during filming. For instance, he reportedly stayed in a wheelchair the whole time he was filming his award-winning role in 1989’s “My Left Foot.”

For several years, Cox has been speaking out against method acting – as he criticized his onscreen “Succession” son, Jeremy Strong, for engaging in that acting style on the HBO show. 

Strong, 46, made headlines in 2021 when the New Yorker revealed his full-immersion acting methods, which he used to play Kendall Roy. 

“I’ve worked with intense actors before. It’s a particularly American disease, I think, this inability to separate yourself off while you’re doing the job,” Cox told the New Yorker. “The result that Jeremy gets is always pretty tremendous. I just worry about what he does to himself. I worry about the crises he puts himself through in order to prepare.”

In a 2021 appearance on “Late Night with Seth Meyers,” Cox further said about Strong, “He does get obsessed with the work. And I worry about what it does to him, because if you can’t separate yourself — because you’re dealing with all of this material every day. You can’t live in it. Eventually, you get worn out.”

Cox went on to slam Strong for staying in character in a Feb. 2023 interview with Town & Country. 

“He’s a very good actor,” he said about the “Deliver Me From Nowhere” star. “And the rest of the ensemble is all okay with this. But knowing a character and what the character does is only part of the skill set.”

He deadpanned: “It’s f–king annoying. Don’t get me going on it.”

Day-Lewis, meanwhile, announced his retirement from acting in 2017, but came made a comeback to star in his son Ronan’s new film, “Anemone.”

“Looking back on it now — I would have done well to just keep my mouth shut, for sure,” the “There Will Be Blood” actor told Rolling Stone in September. “It just seems like such grandiose gibberish to talk about.”

As for method acting, he told Big Issue that he doesn’t like how it’s been “misrepresented to the extent it has been.”

“They focus on, ‘Oh, he lived in a jail cell for six months,’” referring to his 1993 movie, “In the Name of The Father.” 

“Those are the least important details. In all the performing arts, people find their methods as a means to an end. It’s with the intention of freeing yourself so you present your colleagues with a living, breathing human being they can interact with. It’s very simple,” he elaborated. “So it pisses me off this whole ‘oh, he went full method’ thing. What the f–k, you know? Because it’s invariably attached to the idea of some kind of lunacy.”

“I 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.”