Jacob Elordi joked about partly going Method to play Heathcliff in “Wuthering Heights,” only to fall victim to a freak accident that forced him physically to get into character. As he recounted to Esquire magazine, the film’s makeup artist Siân Miller “was designing the scars from the whips for Heathcliff’s back” and sarcastically challenged Elordi to go Method by saying: “If Daniel Day-Lewis was playing Heathcliff, he would have come in with scars.”
“I said, ‘Well I’m going to go away and maim myself on the weekend to prove to you that I’m Heathcliff!’” Elordi quipped back. “That night I went home, and the house I was staying in had a steam shower: a brass knob that steam came from out of the wall.”
Elordi explained, “The full story is that, when I was doing ‘Frankenstein,’ I had so much make-up in my fingers and in my feet all the time, and I left it on for the whole shoot because I couldn’t be bothered washing it all off. As Heathcliff, I was covered in mange and dirt, and I thought, ‘I’m not going to do that again, I’m going to clean my feet properly every night and come in to work fresh the next day.’ So I went to clean my feet, and I leant back and my back seared into the steam knob and I stood up screaming; it tore up my back. When I went to work on Monday I had a second-degree burn.”
“Wuthering Heights” director Emerald Fennell remembered receiving a text message “in the first week of shooting” that “Jacob’s in the hospital.”
“Obviously I thought, ‘Oh my god, he’s had a car accident,’ and then he was like, ‘He’s burnt his back in the shower,’” the filmmaker said, noting that she eventually asked Elordi if the injury was in “the spirit of Daniel Day-Lewis.”
“It was actual Daniel Day-Lewis. In the shower,” Elordi joked.
Day-Lewis has become infamously synonymous with Method acting over the course of his career, much to his recent annoyance. While promoting “Anemone” last year, the three-time Oscar winner said that criticism surrounding Method acting often comes from those who simply don’t understand it.
“All the recent commentary in the last few years about Method acting is invariably from people who have little or no understanding of what it actually involves. It’s almost as if it’s some specious science that we’re involved in, or a cult,” Day-Lewis said. “But it’s just a way of freeing yourself so that the spontaneity, when you are working with your colleagues in front of the camera, that you are free to respond in any way that you’ll move to in that moment.”
Day-Lewis went on to explain that going Method doesn’t mean “you’re sealed off from experiencing” your own real life, but rather that “you’re in a self-contained experience of your own.” He continued: “But really, if you’ve done your work, you should be free to accept whatever passes through you.”
“Wuthering Heights” opens in theaters Feb. 13 from Warner Bros. Head over to Esquire’s website to read Elordi’s interview in its entirety.