The Deep Dive #2: Daniel Day-Lewis
This edition features Daniel Day-Lewis, a three-time Academy Award-winning actor known for his dedication to method acting and remarkable character transformations.
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The Intensely Imagined Life of Daniel Day-Lewis (1992)
Richard B. Woodward // The New York Times Magazine
The calmness and high purpose that Day-Lewis brought to his role was readily witnessed. He would stand up to his thighs in the cold autumn waters of a lake for 15 minutes, cradling his gun, still as a heron, as the camera crews lined him up in their shots. He didn't seem to allow himself anachronisms. Between scenes a few of the Mohicans shared a Marlboro, stubbing it out with their moccasins; Hawkeye rolled his own cigarettes. While redcoats in reflective sunglasses would strap on their Walkmans or touch up their beards with electric razors, Day-Lewis tended to go off by himself and sit under a tree in the sun.
Joan Juliet Buck // The New Yorker
He recalls, “I had a misconception about theatre, as about cabinetmaking. One by one, the veils were lifted, and I began to see what the possibilities were. When I saw Phil Daniels in Barrie Keefe’s ‘Gotcha!’ it was like five veils. The play is so hard, so poetic, in its inarticulacy; beautifully written and acted, in its righteous rage. One of the reasons so many actors of my generation have been drawn to actors in America—Brando first, Clift, De Niro, Pesci, Duvall—is the way in which a poetry is created out of the life of someone who can’t express himself.”
Daniel Day-Lewis, In the Name of the Father: Speaking with the polite, tight-lipped actor (1994)
Lisa Schwarzbaum // Entertainment Weekly
“I suppose,” continues Day-Lewis, ”in a facile way, it’s true that my relationship with my father was unresolved when he died. But all relationships with all parents remain unresolved, particularly between father and son. I never had to escape from my father, because when somebody dies they do the job for you, you know? In a certain way. Although in some ways they make it thereafter impossible for you ever to escape.”
Eileen Myles // Index Magazine
In those quiet months before you approach the dreaded beast, you begin to enter into a world that isn't yours. People are always reading some sort of craziness into that, but it seems logical to me. You just start taking steps towards that other life. Of course, you never entirely give over your own life or your own self. You never relinquish everything, rather, there's an exchange that takes place at certain moments. You don't know how it happens, or where. But you think you've traveled a vast distance — you felt that you were living in another place. That's where the joy of it is.
Daniel Day-Lewis: 'People already think I'm mad' (2006)
Nick Duerden // The Independent
"I'd always felt very strongly in the power of vocation," he says. "And as a teenager, I felt as if I couldn't do anything but become an actor. So when I subsequently developed another passion - for furniture making - I became greatly confused. I'd even go so far as to say it depressed me. I'd seen vocation as something pure; pure and singular, but here I was now interested in other things."
Lynn Hirschberg // The New York Times Magazine
“The last day of shooting is surreal. Your mind, your body, your spirit are not in any way prepared to accept that this experience is coming to an end. In the months that follow the finish of a film, you feel profound emptiness. You’ve devoted so much of your time to unleashing, in an unconscious way, some sort of spiritual turmoil, and even if it’s uncomfortable, no part of you wishes to leave that character behind. The sense of bereavement is such that it can take years before you can put it to rest.”
Daniel Day-Lewis: The Way He Lives Now (2007)
Judith Lewis // LA Weekly
“In the end,” Day-Lewis says, “no matter what stimulus you can find that belonged to that world, that world that you’re trying to imagine, finally imagination is the only thing that’s going to take you there. And more than anything else, I had time. I had time, and a quiet place, and neutral surroundings. I’ve got a room at home where I can really daydream without being disturbed, and I suppose it’s there where things ferment.”
The enigma of Day-Lewis (2008)
Peter Stanford // The Guardian
The director Jim Sheridan, with whom Day-Lewis made My Left Foot, The Boxer and In the Name of the Father, once reported him as saying that he hated acting. 'I dare say I did when I said it,' he retorts good-naturedly. 'Who doesn't hate the thing that they most love? Acting is an impossibly illusive trade to ply, but the prevailing sense I have when I go to work is one of joy. It is always represented as a kind of self-flagellation for me. It couldn't be further from the truth.'
Daniel Day-Lewis: How the Greatest Living Actor Became Lincoln (2012)
Jessica Winter // Time Magazine
Day-Lewis’ initial misgivings fell away once he began to research the part, finding his way toward Lincoln as a scholar would. “The minute you begin to approach him—and there are vast corridors that have been carved that lead you to an understanding of that man’s life, both through the great riches of his own writing and all the contemporary accounts and biographies—he feels immediately and surprisingly accessible. He draws you closer to him.”
Daniel Day-Lewis Opens Up About Giving Up Acting After Phantom Thread (2017)
Lynn Hirschberg // W Magazine
“Do I feel better?” he asked, anticipating my question. “Not yet. I have great sadness. And that’s the right way to feel. How strange would it be if this was just a gleeful step into a brand-new life. I’ve been interested in acting since I was 12 years old, and back then, everything other than the theater—that box of light—was cast in shadow. When I began, it was a question of salvation. Now, I want to explore the world in a different way.”