Daniel Day-Lewis
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Daniel Michael Blake Day-Lewis (born 29 April, 1957) is an Academy Award-, triple BAFTA-, double Screen Actors Guild- and Golden Globe award-winning British-born actor with dual British and Irish citizenship. Day-Lewis studied at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, and is known for his famous portrayals of William "Bill The Butcher" Cutting in Gangs of New York and Gerry Conlon in In The Name Of The Father. He has won two Academy Awards for Best Actor for portraying the murderous Daniel Plainview in There Will Be Blood and Christy Brown for My Left Foot, with a further two nominations. He has become known as one of the most selective actors in the film industry, having starred in only four movies in the last ten years.[1] He is a method actor, known for his constant devotion to and research of his roles. Often, he will remain completely in character for the duration of the shooting schedule of his films.[1]
Early lifeDay-Lewis was born in London, the son of actress Jill Balcon and the Irish-born, British Poet Laureate Cecil Day-Lewis. Day-Lewis has dual British-Irish citizenship.[2][3] His mother is of Baltic Jewish descent, the daughter of Sir Michael Balcon, who was the former head of Ealing Studios.[4][5] Two years after his birth in London, the Day-Lewis family moved to Croom's Hill, Greenwich, where Daniel grew up along with his older sister, Tamasin Day-Lewis, who later became a documentary filmmaker and television chef. 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.[6] Following frequent health problems, he died when Daniel was 15. Daniel felt unsettled about his lack of emotion, and regretted not having been closer to his father. Living in Greenwich, Day-Lewis naturally found himself among some tough South London kids and being Jewish and "posh", he was often bullied.[7] Very quickly, therefore, he mastered the local accent and mannerisms — which he believes to have been the first convincing performances he gave. 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 petty crimes.[8][9] In 1968, Day-Lewis's parents, finding him to be "too wild", sent him to Sevenoaks School in Kent, as a boarder.[9] Though he detested the school, he was introduced to his two most prominent interests, woodworking and acting. While his disdain for the school grew, he made his film debut at the age of 14 in Sunday Bloody Sunday in which he played a vandal in an uncredited role. He described the experience as "heaven", for getting paid £2 to vandalize expensive cars parked outside his local church.[6] After two years at Sevenoaks, Daniel was transferred to the Bedales School in Petersfield.[9] Leaving Bedales in 1975, his unruly attitude had faded and he now had to make a career choice. Although he had excelled onstage at the National Youth Theatre, he decided to become a cabinet-maker, applying for a five-year apprenticeship. However, because of a lack of experience, he was not accepted.[9] He then applied (and was accepted) at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, which he attended for three years, eventually performing at the Bristol Old Vic itself.[9] (At one point he played understudy to Pete Postlethwaite, whom he would later play opposite in In the Name of the Father, and with whom he shares a brief scene in Last of the Mohicans where Postlethwaite is a British officer) Career1980sEleven years after his film debut, Day-Lewis continued his film career with a small part in Gandhi (1982) as Colin, a street thug who bullies the title character, only to be immediately chastised by his high-strung mother. In 1984, he had a supporting role as the conflicted, but ultimately loyal first mate in The Bounty, after which he joined the Royal Shakespeare Company, playing Romeo in Romeo and Juliet. (He later grew to detest the character, however, and often described him as a "wanker").[citation needed] The actor was next featured on stage as "The Count" in the stage-play of Dracula where he appeared with his hair dyed 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 bi-racial couple in My Beautiful Laundrette. Day-Lewis gained further public notice when the film was released simultaneously with A Room with a View (1986), in which he played an entirely different character: the effete upper-class fiancé of the main character (played by Helena Bonham Carter). In 1987, Day-Lewis assumed leading man status by starring in Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being, co-starring Lena Olin and Juliette Binoche, as a Czech doctor whose hyperactive and purely physical sex life is thrown into disarray when he allows himself to become emotionally involved with a woman. During the eight-month shoot he learned Czech and first began to refuse to break character on or off the set for the entire shooting schedule.[9] Day-Lewis put his personal version of "method acting" 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. During filming, his eccentricities came to the fore, due to his refusal to break character. Playing a severely paralyzed character on screen, off screen Day-Lewis had to be wheeled around the set in his wheelchair, and crew members would curse at having to lift him over camera and lighting wires, all so that he might gain insight into all aspects of Christy Brown's life, including the embarrassments.[8] He broke two ribs during filming from assuming a hunched-over position in his wheelchair for so many weeks.[10] Daniel Day-Lewis returned to the stage to work with Richard Eyre, as Hamlet at the National Theatre, 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 (a then unknown Jeremy Northam) finished what little was left of the production's run. One rumour following the incident was that Day-Lewis had seen the ghost of his own father,[9] although the incident was officially attributed to exhaustion. He confirmed on the top British celebrity chat show 'Parkinson' on ITV that this rumour was true. He has not appeared on stage since. 1990sIn 1992, three years after his Oscar win, The Last of the Mohicans was released. Day-Lewis' character research for this film was well-publicized; he reportedly underwent rigorous weight training and learned to live off the land and forest where his character lived, camping, hunting and fishing. He even carried a Kentucky rifle at all times during filming in order to remain in character and learned how to skin animals. He returned to work with Jim Sheridan 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. He lost a substantial amount of weight for the part, kept his Northern Irish accent on and off the set for the entire shooting schedule, and spent stretches of time in a prison cell. He also insisted that crew members throw cold water at him and verbally abuse 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 that with Jim Sheridan's The Boxer as a former boxer and IRA member recently released from prison. His preparation included training for two years with former boxing world champion Barry McGuigan. Following The Boxer, Daniel Day-Lewis took a leave of absence from acting by putting himself into "semi-retirement" and returning to his old passion of woodworking. He moved to Florence, Italy, where he became intrigued by the craft of shoemaking, eventually apprenticing as a shoemaker for a time while his exact whereabouts and actions were not made publicly known.[11] While, as a consequence, little of these events are known, it has been rumoured that Day-Lewis, in return for room and board, instructed the master cobbler in acting. It has further been suggested that, following Day-Lewis' departure, the shoemaker took up a career as a traveling Commedia dell'Arte performer—a profession which has seen his earning potential skyrocket. Day-Lewis has refused to comment on the subject, simply stating that "Laurencino [the shoemaker] was a man of many gifts". 2000sImage:Actor David.JPG
Day-Lewis in Berlin 2005
After a five-year absence from filming, Day-Lewis returned to act in multiple Academy Award nominated Gangs of New York, a film directed by Martin Scorsese (with whom he had worked on The Age of Innocence) and produced by Harvey Weinstein. In his role as the villain gang leader "Bill the Butcher" (who, ironically, has a pure hatred for Ireland and the Irish people), he starred along with Leonardo DiCaprio, who played Bill's young protegé. He began his lengthy, self-disciplined process by taking lessons as an apprentice butcher, and while filming, he was never out of character between takes (including keeping his character's New York accent). At one point during filming, he was diagnosed with pneumonia. He refused to wear a warmer coat or to take treatment because it was not in keeping with the period. However, he was eventually persuaded to seek medical treatment. His performance in Gangs of New York earned him his third Academy Award nomination and won him the BAFTA Award for Best Actor. After Gangs of New York, Day-Lewis' wife, director Rebecca Miller (daughter of playwright Arthur Miller), offered him the lead role in her film The Ballad of Jack and Rose, in which he played a dying man with regrets over how his life had evolved and over how he had raised his teenage daughter. During filming he arranged to live separately from his wife in order to achieve the 'isolation' needed to focus on his own character's reality.[6] The film received mixed reviews, while Day-Lewis received almost universal praise for his performance.[citation needed] In 2007, Day-Lewis appeared in director Paul Thomas Anderson's loose adaptation of the Upton Sinclair novel Oil!, titled There Will Be Blood.[12] Day-Lewis received the BAFTA, Screen Actors Guild Award (which he dedicated to the late Heath Ledger), Critic's Choice Award, Golden Globe, and Academy Award for Best Actor (2008) for his performance in the film. Personal lifeDay-Lewis rarely talks publicly about his personal life. He had a relationship with French actress Isabelle Adjani. The relationship lasted six years and eventually ended after a split and reconciliation.[9] Gabriel-Kane Day-Lewis was born on April 9, 1995 in New York, months after the relationship between the two actors had 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. The couple have two sons, Ronan Cal Day-Lewis (born June 14, 1998) and Cashel Blake Day-Lewis (born in May 2002) and divide their time between their homes in the U.S. and Ireland.[6] He is a supporter of Millwall Football Club.[citation needed] Awards and nominationsAcademy AwardsBest Actor
BAFTA AwardsBest Actor in a Leading Role
Golden Globe AwardsBest Actor - Motion Picture Drama
Screen Actors' Guild AwardsOutstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role
Filmography
See alsoReferences
External links
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