Method Actor

Daniel Michael Blake Day-Lewis (born 29 April 1957) is an English actor with both British and Irish citizenship. Day-Lewis, who grew up in London, is the son of actress Jill Balcon and Poet Laureate Cecil Day-Lewis.

Despite his training in the classical presentational acting style at the Bristol Old Vic, 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, even to the point of adversely affecting his health.

(1) Day-Lewis threw his personal version of "method acting" into full throttle in 1989 with his performance as Christy Brown in Jim Sheridan's My Left Foot which garnered him numerous awards, including the Academy Award for Best Actor. Daniel prepared for his role by frequent visits to Sandymount School Clinic in Dublin, where he formed friendships with several people with disabilities, some of whom had no speech. During filming, his eccentricities came to the fore, due to his refusal to break character. Playing a severely paralysed character on screen, off screen Day-Lewis had to be moved 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 Brown's life, including the embarrassments.

(2) In 1993, Day-Lewis played Newland Archer in Martin Scorsese's adaptation of the Edith Wharton novel The Age of Innocence, opposite Winona Ryder and Michelle Pfeiffer. To prepare for the film, set in America's Gilded Age, he wore 1870s-period aristocratic clothing around New York City for two months, including top hat, cane and cape in cold weather.

(3) In November 2010, it was announced that Day-Lewis would play Abraham Lincoln in Steven Spielberg's film Lincoln. Based on the book Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, the film began shooting in Richmond, Virginia in October 2011. The film was released in select US cities on November 9, 2012, and received a US national release on November 16, 2012. Day-Lewis spent a year in preparation for the role, a time he requested from Spielberg. Day-Lewis read over 100 books on Lincoln, and long worked with the film's makeup artist to achieve a physical likeness to Lincoln. Lincoln received widespread critical acclaim, with major praise directed to Day-Lewis' performance.

He is known as one of the most selective actors in the film industry, having starred in only five films since 1998, with as many as five years between roles.

He has twice won the Academy Award for Best Actor, for his portrayals of Christy Brown in My Left Foot (1989) and Daniel Plainview in There Will Be Blood (2007). He also won the BAFTA Award for Best Actor and the Screen Actors' Guild Award for his role as Bill "The Butcher" Cutting in Gangs of New York (2002). Most recently, he won his fourth BAFTA Award for Best Actor, the Golden Globe for Best Actor - Motion Picture Drama and the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role for his role as Abraham Lincoln in Steven Spielberg's Lincoln (2012), for which he is also currently nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor.

Will he win tonight? Yes as Abraham Lincoln :-))))))

He looks much older now. When I watched his movie for the first time, it was The Age of Innocence. His eyes of deep sadness could trap others to follow him. There are something in those eyes. We are addictive to certain kind of sadness ...... in life, for what we lose or what we can not have.

The other movie I watched (that I may not like) was the Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being, co-starring Lena Olin and Juliette Binoche, as a Czech surgeon whose hyperactive and purely physical sex life is thrown into disarray when he allows himself to become emotionally involved with a woman (a womanizer). 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. Later he disappeared for a while until shown up in Gangs of New York.

He will be considered as a great actor. No doubt.

No matter what you do, as long as you put your full heart in it, you will be successful. You will be happier in your own world. Don't care what others say. Others may not be qualified to judge us - good or bad   :-))))))))))))))))))