Daniel Day Lewis – before he won three oscars

   December 2002 By Philip Berk

On his first trip to America  to promote My Left Foot, Daniel Day Lewis, accompanied by his sister, epitomized the impoverished, struggling actor.

But, in reality  he was quite the opposite.

As the scion of one of England’s notable families, he was literally born with a silver (screen) spoon in his mouth.

His mother is the graceful Jill Balcon, who never considered nepotism a bad word. She appeared in a number of her father’s films, notably Nicholas Nickleby.

His grandfather was Sir Michael Balcon, the revered  producer who at one time or another ran almost all the British studios, most notably Ealing where he produced the classic comedies, Whisky Galore and Kind Hearts and Coronets.

Daniel’s father was Cecil Day Lewis, England’s Poet Laureate.

With an ancestry like that, you wondered how he was able to keep such a low profile?

At the time my answer was, Without great difficulty!

Now he is back after a six year absence giving the performance of his career in Martin Scorsese’s eagerly anticipated Gangs of New York.

The long absence shouldn’t surprise anyone who’s followed his career since 1986, when he appeared almost simultaneously in two hits, A Room With a View and My Beautiful Laundrette,  establishing himself as a remarkably versatile young actor.

So what did he follow it up with? The most preposterous film imaginable, Stars and Bars, in which he ran around totally naked for the last half hour. Fortunately for him, the film was not widely seen.

Least of all by (director) Philip Kaufman who chose him to play the coveted lead in The Unbearable Lightness of Being. It was his first romantic role.

Although the film failed to win unanimous approval, it allowed Daniel to realize a dream — to play Hamlet at the National Theatre in England. Unfortunately that met with disaster, and during one performance he walked off stage and was not seen for months thereafter. 

When he reemerged it was in triumph as Christy Brown in My Left Foot, for which he won the coveted Oscar as best actor. Not only was this honor unexpected, it gave him an immediate bankability which allowed him to do whatever he wanted.

So what did he do? He acted in a small film shot in Argentina called Eversmile, New Jersey, which never saw the light of a projection booth. The film went right to video, and even there it’s difficult to locate.

Two years later he was Michael Mann’s choice for the lead in The Last of the Mohicans, which became an unexpected box office hit in the States. Both the critics and the public were dazzled by his athletic performance.

After that he worked for the first time with Martin Scorsese on The Age of Innocence, opposite two of the screen’s most sought after actresses, Michelle Pfeiffer and Winona Ryder.

In the same year he was reunited him with his My Left Foot director, and their collaboration, In the Name of the Father, earned him his second Oscar nomination.

After a three year absence, he was reunited with Winona Ryder for the film version of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible

The film failed on all counts — even he got poor reviews — but it introduced him to Miller’s daughter Rebecca who changed his life. 

After a short courtship they were married, and he retired to rural domesticity.

Until Martin Scorsese  offered him the lead in Gangs of New York.

The film took three years to make, but for Day-Lewis it’s been worth the wait.

As Bill the Butcher, the educated but ruthless sociopath whose dying words are, “Thank God I die a true American.” he’s likely to win him a second Oscar in March!

At his press conference in New York for the film, he’s in high spirits. Sporting a buzz cut, he appears lean and muscular and far younger than his 42 years.

He was once quoted as saying that he stays in a role 24 hours a day.

“Not quite 24 hours, although even my dreams seem to be related to the work I am doing.”

How difficult was it working on a project like Gangs which spanned a period of three years?

“Certainly it seemed as if it would never end. It was a lengthy shoot and a tough assignment. Physically it was demanding. You encounter a thousand problems a day in this kind of work, but overcoming those problems ultimately provides the greatest pleasure.”

How did he prepare for the role?

“I prefer not talking about the work that I do because I believe people are fed up with too much of that information. Actors particularly are encouraged to speak about these things. I myself always read that stuff when I get hold of it,  but in the end I’m always rather disappointed. I’d rather not know about it. So, as far as possible, I avoid talking about it.”

What about his glass eye in the film, how  was that  done?  

“Again, the less people know about a film before they see it the better. Our job is to tantalize, not to give the game away, least of all before audiences have had a chance to see it.” 

Okay then, is he prepared to discuss his character’s rage and anger. Did that take a toll on him?

“Rage is an unsettling thing to live with even for a brief time. For a longer period it’s not an easy thing. But part of my fascination for this work is to discover for myself something which hitherto had remained mysterious to me. I know this sounds perverse but it gives me pleasure to explore things like that. There’s something strangely liberating about it. But I can’t tell you why.”

In the past eight years he’s made only two films. (The Boxer was the last.) Was that his choice?

“I take those periods of time off so I’m better able to enjoy the experience of working when I am working, because if you’re not enjoying it, it can become torture. Acting for me is not self-flagellation. It’s pleasure; so to earn the right to have that pleasure, I spend time away from it.”

There were reports that during his absence he became apprenticed to a cobbler. Are those reports true?

“I’ve never chosen to speak about that. A number of people have on my behalf but I’ve never contributed to it because it seemed to me it was a period of my life that I had a right to (keep private).”

Surprisingly he is willing to talk about his wife and new son.

What’s it like sitting around the breakfast table with people like (his father in law) Arthur Miller and wife Rebecca, who’s also a brilliant writer and director. 

Surely it must be a heady atmosphere. Do they ever come down to earth like the rest of us?

“Just about 99.9 percent of the time,” he replies.

So it’s not all intellectual stimulation?

“I’m surrounded by people who don’t know the meaning of the word pretentiousness. Of course they do, but it’s not something they embody themselves. Both Arthur and Rebecca are cut from the same cloth, and they’re about as down to earth as you can get.”

Does he devote a lot of his time to his son?

“Yeah, we spend a lot of time together, all of us. We enjoy each other’s company.” 

His father died when he was twelve, but his grandfather (Sir Michael Balcon)lived to see his early success.

Was he close to his grandfather?

“After my father died, I became close to him. I spent more time with him during those years and grew to like him more and more. Right up to the end of his life, he was always fascinated with what people were doing. He lived away from the industry but he needed to keep in touch.”

How old was he when his grandfather died?

“Twenty one, in my second year of theatre school.”

Did he get his his first role in Sunday, Bloody Sunday through him?

“Not at all. They were filming in Southeast London, where I grew up, and they needed a lot of hooligans to go and play football in the park. We were chosen by a man who ran the local fruit and vegetable shop. For some reason he was in charge of rounding up the suspects. John Schlesinger, the director, asked to see a group of us, and he chose the three nastiest looking ones for this special job of scratching a row of very posh cars with broken glass, and I was one of them.”

Did his father encourage for him to become an actor? 

“I don’t think he knew I wanted to be an actor. While he was still alive, it was more of a secret desire I had. I never really spoke to him about it. I doubt if he would have taken it very seriously at  age twelve. Even though I was already fairly determined in my own mind, we never ever really discussed it.”

And his mother? 

“She didn’t actively encourage me until I decided myself, because both she and her father knew that it wasn’t an easy life.”

Does he mind talking about his father?

“Not at all, I love to talk about him. I’m rather used to the fact that in England where we have a very good educational system, people generally don’t know anything about him, whereas in America people are inclined to know who he is. I’m not in the habit of bringing up the subject,  but when it’s put to me, I’m always happy to talk about it.”

Although he now talks about being a father, there was a time when he didn’t acknowledge the child he sired with actress Isabel Adjani, Gabriel, who’s seven years old.

When asked about it, he shuts off with discussion with a defiant, “I prefer to keep that to myself.”  

Why was Hamlet such a bad experience?

“I suppose I approached the part with no real understanding of the weight of tradition that had gone before. A burden is (usually) put upon you, but I was quite resistant to that. I had never seen the play before; in fact I had never read it. So I came to it in a state of innocence, which I think was rather lucky for me. Gradually I began to understand  what I’d taken on. We got some good reviews, and some extremely unpleasant ones. I’ve never felt immune to the sting of criticism. It was difficult enough to do the play badly.”

What does he say when people compare him to Laurence Olivier?. 

“I tell them, he was a unique man. The work he did was absolutely unique to himself, and anyone who works after him will work in different ways and will achieve different things, far lesser things probably. But the comparison is quite ludicrous.”

There are some who might disagree with him.

What induced him to make Eversmile, New Jersey? 

“It was after My Left Foot, and it was pure coincidence that it followed that film; the timing was something I had no control over. I was dog meat by the time I started working on it. I was fascinated by the idea of being in Patagonia for four months, which was a very strange place, and I did a terrible thing when I arrived there. The producer wanted me to do a press conference, which  I had a huge resistance to because what do you talk about before you’ve even started to make a film.

“So when we had the press conference, I told them that I’d been studying to be a dentist at night school for a couple of years, and that the whole film was an elaborate promotion for Eversmile tooth brushes. They totally believed I was a dentist and had given up acting. I’d always been fascinated by dentistry because I had a grand uncle who had been a pioneer dentist in South Africa.” 

His grandmother was from an influential Jewish family that lived there.

In the past he’s denied his Jewish heritage, but this time he acknowledges it.

When asked if he felt guilty about playing a character (in Gangs) who’s a ruthless native American who resents the influx of Irish immigrants to New York, he replies, “I’m sure I’ll have to pay the price when I go home, but you see I’m a mongrel. I’m an Irish citizen, which I have the right to be.” (His father was Irish.) “I’ve adopted that right, but I’m an Englishman, I’m a Jew, I’m an Anglo-Irishman, I’m a European, I mean who the hell knows what I am. I’ve lived in different places at different times and for the most part, by education and culture, I’m more English than I am anything else. I’ve long stopped worrying about it. But yes, I have identified very strongly with the Irish, both the country and the people and the history of that place because of my father. So I’m glad to have been part of a film that shows that aspect the Irish emigration and the unthinkably horrible experience they had when they first arrived in this country. But obviously it was no part of my thinking when I was doing it.”

Ironically when later asked to compare working with Scorsese eight years ago on Age of Innocence and now on Gangs of New York, he admits,” I admired Newland (in Age) in the way you would an exotic creature who lives in a world rather removed from your own, whereas with Bill I felt a sort of kinship.”