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Biography
Early life
Day-Lewis is the son of Cecil Day-Lewis, Poet Laureate of England. His mother, who comes from a Jewish family, is actress Jill Balcon, daughter of Sir Michael Balcon, former head of Ealing Studios. Two years after his birth in London the Day-Lewis family moved to Croom's Hill, Greenwich where he grew up along with his older sister, Lydia Tamasin Day-Lewis, known as Tamasin, who'd later become a renowned documentary filmmaker and television chef. His father had frequent health problems, first being hospitalized when Daniel Day-Lewis was 8, and then followed with a series of heart attacks. Cecil Day-Lewis was already 53 years old at the time of his son's birth, and seemed to take little interest in his children at the time. Later, when Cecil Day-Lewis died, Daniel Day-Lewis felt unsettled about his lack of emotion. He later regretted not being more close to his father and wished he had felt more at the time of his death. Daniel Day-Lewis was 15 years old at the time.
Living in Greenwich, Day-Lewis naturally found himself among some tough South London kids. Being Jewish and posh, he was often bullied by local children his age. Very quickly, therefore, he mastered the local accent and mannerisms, and believes this to have been the first convincing role he played. Later in life, he was known to speak of himself as very much a disorderly character in his younger years, often in trouble for shoplifting and other illegal acts.
In 1968, Day-Lewis' parents found him to be too wild, and decided to instill discipline into him by sending him to a boarding school in Kent called Sevenoaks School. Though he detested the school, he was introduced to his two most prominent interests, woodworking and acting. He made his debut in Cry, The Beloved Country wearing extensive makeup for his role as a little black boy.
While his disdain for the school grew, he did however make his film debut at the very young age of 14 in Sunday Bloody Sunday where he played a child vandal in an uncredited role. He described the experience as "heaven" for getting paid £2 to vandalize expensive cars parked outside his local church.[3] After this, having spent two years at Sevenoaks, Daniel was transferred to be with his sister at Bedales School in Petersfield.
Leaving Bedales in 1975, Day-Lewis' unruly attitude had faded away and he now had to make his career choice. He excelled onstage at the National Youth Theatre, but though he loved acting he found something "seedy" and "distasteful" about backstage life. Instead, he decided to become a cabinet-maker, applying for a five year apprenticeship. However, because of his lack of experience, he was not accepted.
Leaving the woodworking profession behind, he applied and was accepted at Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, where he spent three years studying Theatre and eventually performing at Bristol Old Vic itself. At one point he played understudy to Pete Postlethwaite, whom he would later play opposite in In the Name of the Father.
Career
Eleven years after his film debut Day-Lewis would begin his professional film career in a bit part in Gandhi (1982) as Colin, a street thug who bullies the title character, only to be immediately emasculated by his high strung mother. In 1984, he had a supporting role appearing as John Fryer, a cowardly First Mate in The Bounty, followed by joining the Royal Shakespeare Company, performing as Romeo in Romeo and Juliet. However he later grew to detest the character, often referring to him as a "wanker".
A poster featuring Daniel Day-Lewis in his Academy Award winning performance as Christy Brown in My Left Foot.
He was then featured on stage as "The Count" in the stage-play of Dracula. He appeared with his hair dyed completely blond in a throwback to Nosferatu. He later let his hair grow out to give a frosted "punk look" when he played half of a gay biracial couple in My Beautiful Laundrette, and gained public notice when this role was released simultaneously with a completely different character in A Room with a View in 1986, where he played a snobbish upper-class fiance of the main character.
In 1987, Day-Lewis assumed leading man status by starring in Philip Kaufman's The Unbearable Lightness of Being, co-starring with Juliette Binoche, as a Czechoslovakian doctor whose hyperactive and purely physical sex life is thrown into disarray when he allows himself to become emotionally involved with a woman. The film was nominated for two Oscars and won four other awards. It was during the 8-month shoot that he learned Czech and first began to refuse to break character on or off the set for the entire shooting schedule.[5]
At Bristol Old Vic, Day-Lewis developed his own personal version of "method acting", an acting technique that focuses on drawing on the actor's own personal experiences, memories and emotions in order to replicate them inside of a character. He put his method into full use in 1989 with his performance as Christy Brown in Jim Sheridan's My Left Foot which won him numerous awards, including the Academy Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role. While filming, Day-Lewis' eccentricities came to the fore, mostly due to his almost always refusing to break character.
Unlike in The Unbearable Lightness of Being, this refusal forced him to constrain himself to the same extent as Christy Brown. Day-Lewis had to be wheeled through the set in his wheelchair, had to be helped with his food, and crew members would curse him for having to carry him in the chair over camera and lighting wires, all that Day-Lewis might gain insight into what he believed to be all aspects of Christy Brown's life, including the embarrassments.[4]
On one visit from his agent, Day-Lewis again refused to come out of character as Christy Brown, and his frustrated agent angirly left the set. He also broke two ribs during filming from assuming the hunched-over position in his wheelchair for weeks of filming.[6]
Day-Lewis returned to the stage to work with Richard Eyre, as Hamlet at the National Theater, but collapsed in the middle of a scene where the ghost of Hamlet's father first appears to his son. He began sobbing uncontrollably and refused to go back on stage. His understudy was called and was eventually asked to finish what little was left of the production's run. A rumor that circled following the incident was that Day-Lewis saw his own father's ghost in the scene. He has never commented on this rumor and the incident was officially attributed to exhaustion. He has not appeared on stage since.[4]
In 1992, three years after his jump to Oscar status, The Last of the Mohicans was released. Day-Lewis' character research for this film was well-publicised — he reportedly underwent rigorous weight training and learned to live off the land and forest where his character supposedly lived, camping out, hunting and fishing. He even carried his character's musket with him at all times during filming in order to remain in character. However, it has been denied by several crewmembers that he actually slept with the musket by his side.[7]
While the film carried him to new heights of stardom, Day-Lewis still preferred to operate within at his will, preferring less "Hollywood" films such as The Age of Innocence co-starring Michelle Pfeiffer and directed by Martin Scorsese. However, he ultimately returned to Jim Sheridan to work on In the Name of the Father, in which he played Gerry Conlon, one of the Guildford Four who were wrongfully convicted of a bombing carried out by the Provisional IRA. After losing a substantial amount of weight, he kept his Northern Irish accent on and off the set for the entire shooting schedule and also spent much time living in a prison cell. He also made crew members throw cold water and verbal abuse at him. The film earned him his second Academy Award nomination, his third BAFTA nomination, and his second Golden Globe nomination.
In 1996, Day-Lewis starred in a film version of The Crucible based on the play by Arthur Miller and co-starring Winona Ryder. He followed the role in 1997 with another return to Jim Sheridan with The Boxer as a former boxer and Irish Republican Army terrorist recently released from prison. His preparation included training for six months with former boxing world champion Barry McGuigan.
Five year absence
Despite popular rumor, Daniel Day-Lewis' supposed five year absence from acting is actually only three years. Although The Boxer was released in 1997 and Gangs of New York was released in 2002, his actual interlude is much shorter because of production dates. The Boxer began and finished its principal photography in 1997. Gangs of New York began its principal photography in 2000.
Day-Lewis did in fact put himself into "semi-retirement" by leaving his acting career behind to return to his old passion for which he was turned down so many years ago, woodworking. He and his family moved to Florence, Italy where he became intrigued by the craft of shoemaking, eventually apprenticing as a cobbler for a time. His exact whereabouts and actions are not publicly known.[8]
Return to acting
Daniel Day-Lewis as Bill "the Butcher" Cutting in the 2002 film Gangs of New York.
After his three year absence following completion of production on The Boxer, Day-Lewis was convinced to return to his acting career by Martin Scorsese (with whom he had worked on The Age of Innocence) and Harvey Weinstein to play the villain of Scorsese's Gangs of New York opposite Leonardo DiCaprio, with a glass eye an intense racist attitude as New York gangleader and butcher, William Cutting. Day-Lewis began his lengthy, self-disciplined process by refusing to break character and keeping his hard New York accent on and off the camera. In addition, butchers from Peckham, London were flown to Italy to take him as an apprentice.
Day-Lewis' dedication threatened his life at one point during filming, when he was diagnosed with pneumonia from wearing too thin a coat. He refused to wear a warmer coat or take treatment because it was not in keeping with the period. He was eventually forced to take antibiotics.[1] His role as Bill "the Butcher" earned him his third Academy Award nomination and won him the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role. At the time, he swore that this film would feature his last role ever.
Day-Lewis (right) as a dying father in the 2005 film The Ballad of Jack and Rose opposite Catherine Keener (left).
This was not to be the case when Day-Lewis' own wife later offered him a role in her film The Ballad of Jack and Rose, where he would play a dying father with regrets of how he isolated and raised his coming of age daughter. As a part of his method, he arranged to live separately from his wife during filming, in order to achieve the "isolation" needed to focus on the reality he had created for himself. [3] The film later received mixed reviews, while Day-Lewis received praise for his performance.
In 2006, it was reported in Variety that Paul Thomas Anderson's next film would be an adaptation of the controversial novel Oil!, renamed There Will Be Blood will star Daniel Day-Lewis in the lead role.[9]
Personal life
Because of his privacy, and general lack of words for explaining his process of method acting, Day-Lewis rarely speaks publicly about his personal life. He had what he would later describe as "the most on-off relationship in the world." with French actress Isabelle Adjani. The strained relationship lasted six years and eventually ended when Adjani notified Day-Lewis, reportedly by fax, that she was pregnant. Day-Lewis later replied, also by fax, that their relationship was over.[10] Gabriel-Kane Day-Lewis was born in 1995 in NYC, months after the relationship ended.
In 1996 while working on the film version of the stage-play The Crucible, he visited the home of playwright Arthur Miller where he was introduced to the writer's daughter, Rebecca Miller. They soon fell in love and were married only two weeks before the film's release. They have two children, Ronan Cal Day-Lewis (born 14 June 1998) and Cashel Blake Day-Lewis (born May 2002). They reportedly split their time between their homes in the US and in Ireland.
Selected filmography
2006
There Will Be Blood
2005
The Ballad of Jack and Rose
Jack Slavin
2002
Gangs of New York
Bill "The Butcher" Cutting
Oscar Nominee - Best Actor in a Leading Role
1997
The Boxer
Danny Flynn
1996
The Crucible
John Proctor
1993
In the Name of the Father
Gerry Conlon
Oscar Nominee - Best Actor in a Leading Role
1993
The Age of Innocence
Newland Archer
1992
The Last of the Mohicans
Hawkeye (Nathaniel Poe)
1989
My Left Foot
Christy Brown
Oscar Winner - Best Actor in a Leading Role
1989
Eversmile, New Jersey
Dr. Fergus O'Connell
1988
Stars and Bars
Henderson Dores
1988
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Tomas
1985
A Room with a View
Cecil Vyse
1985
My Beautiful Laundrette
Johnny
1985
My Brother Jonathon (TV)
Jonathan Dakers
1984
The Bounty
John Fryer
1982
Gandhi
Colin, South African street tough
1982
Frost in May (TV)
Archie Hughes-Forret
1982
How Many Miles to Babylon?
Alex
1971
Sunday Bloody Sunday
Child vandal
uncredited
[12]
Academy Award and nominations
1989 Won My Left Foot
1993 Nominated In the Name of the Father
2002 Nominated Gangs of New York
Preceded by:
Dustin Hoffman
Best Actor
1989
Succeeded by:
Jeremy Irons
See also
List of people on stamps of Ireland
References
↑ a b [2006] "Daniel Day-Lewis IMDB biography". Internet Movie Database. Retrieved 27 February 2006.
↑ [2004] "Article on Daniel Day-Lewis". Buzzle.com. Retrieved 28 February 2006.
↑ a b c d Segal, David (2005) Washington Post Article/Interview on Daniel Day-Lewis. Washington Post
↑ a b c Jenkins, Garry (1995) Daniel Day-Lewis: The Fires Within. St. Martins Pr
↑ a b Wills, Dominic [n.d.]. "Extensive Biography of Daniel Day-Lewis". Tiscali UK. Retrieved 25 February 2006.
↑ [2005] An Inspirational Journey: The Making of My Left Foot DVD. Miramax Films
↑ Jackson, Laura (2006) Daniel Day-Lewis: The Biography. John Blake
↑ [n.d.] (see[1]) New York Times Biography, New York Times. Retrieved 27 February 2006.
↑ Fleming, Michael and Mohr, Ian (2006) There Will Be Blood announcement". Variety. Retrieved 25 February 2006.
↑ Davis, Julia [n.d.] "Daniel Day-Lewis is the antithesis of the attention-seeking Hollywood actor...... (Biography)". Julia Davis. Retrieved 28 February 2006.
↑ (2006) (see Rebecca Miller IMDB biography. Internet Movie Database. Retrieved 27 February 2006.
↑ [2006] "Daniel Day-Lewis IMDB filmography". Internet Movie Database. Retrieved 27 February 2006.
