The irascible Brian Cox has spent years prodding Daniel Day-Lewis over his acting techniques, largely as a way of explaining his irritation with Jeremy Strong. ‘He’s been given a soapbox … which he shows no sign of climbing down from,’ DDL says.
— Vulture (@vulture.com) November 3, 2025 at 1:41 PM
Daniel Day-Lewis did an interview recently where he expressed surprise at being pulled into a disagreement between actors Jeremy Strong and Brian Cox over method acting. Cox has spoken out against method acting in the past, citing Succession co-star Jeremy Strong as an example of why it’s “fucking annoying” and even posited that perhaps Strong picked it up from Day-Lewis when he served as DDL’s assistant.
“Listen, I worked with Brian Cox once and got somehow drawn into this handbags-at-dawn conflict inadvertently. 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. 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 fuck that came from. Jeremy Strong is a very fine actor, I don’t know how he goes about things, but I don’t feel responsible in any way for that.“
He also spoke about frustrations with the way method acting is misrepresented. “I just don’t like it being misrepresented to the extent it has been. I can’t think of a single commentator who’s gobbed off about the method that has any understanding of how it works and the intention behind it. They focus on, ‘Oh, he lived in a jail cell for six months’. 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. So it pisses me off this whole ‘oh, he went full method’ thing. What the fuck, 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.”
