Cecil Day-Lewis, Daniel's father, when he was made laureate in 1968.
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1968
Cecil Day-Lewis when he was made laureate in 1968.
College/University
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1973
The actor was playing a Russian soldier in Chekhov's Three Sisters play in December 1973
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The 'Wall of Fame' hanging in one of Bristol Old Vic Theatre School's hallway.
Gallery of Daniel Day-Lewis
Day-Lewis made his legitimate stage debut in 1982, and shortly afterward appeared in small roles in two films Gandhi (1983) and The Bounty (1985).
Career
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1988
Juliette Binoche and Daniel Day-Lewis in a scene from the film 'The Unbearable Lightness Of Being'
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1989
Daniel Day-Lewis and Alec Guinness.
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1990
Daniel Day-Lewis.
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2007
Daniel Day-Lewis poses at a portrait session in Los Angeles.
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Daniel Day-Lewis in the film Lincoln.
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Daniel Day-Lewis in the film There Will Be Blood.
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Daniel Day-Lewis in the film Phantom Thread.
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Daniel Day-Lewis in the film Gangs Of New York.
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Daniel Day-Lewis in the film The Last of the Mohicans.
Gallery of Daniel Day-Lewis
Daniel Day-Lewis in the film Gangs Of New York.
Gallery of Daniel Day-Lewis
Daniel Day-Lewis in the film The Last of the Mohicans.
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Daniel Day-Lewis in the 2000s.
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Daniel Day-Lewis, writer, director and producer Paul Thomas Anderson and actors Lesley Manville and Vicky Krieps attend The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences Official Academy Screening of Phantom Thread at MOMA on December 12, 2017 in New York City.
Gallery of Daniel Day-Lewis
396 W Broadway, New York, NY 10021, United States
Actor Daniel Day-Lewis and director Rebecca Miller attend the after party for the screening of Sony Pictures Classics' "Maggie's Plan" hosted by Montblanc and The Cinema Society with Mastro Dobel & Kim Crawford Wines at Laduree Soho on May 5, 2016 in New York City.
Gallery of Daniel Day-Lewis
6925 Hollywood Blvd, Hollywood, CA 90028, United States
Daniel Day-Lewis and director Steven Spielberg arrive at the "Lincoln" premiere during AFI Fest 2012 presented by Audi at Grauman's Chinese Theatre on November 8, 2012 in Hollywood, California.
Gallery of Daniel Day-Lewis
W 67th St, New York, NY 10023, United States
Daniel Day-Lewis attends the National Board of Review Annual Gala 2005 at Tavern On The Green January 11, 2005 in New York City.
Achievements
1755 N Highland Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90028, United States
Daniel Day-Lewis, winner of the Best Actor award for "Lincoln," poses in the press room during the Oscars held at Loews Hollywood Hotel on February 24, 2013 in Hollywood, California.
Membership
Awards
Knight Bachelor
2014
Sir Daniel Day-Lewis is made a Knight Bachelor of the British Empire by the Duke of Cambridge.
BAFTA Awards
Bow St, Covent Garden, London WC2E 9DD, United Kingdom
Actor Daniel Day Lewis poses with the award for Best Actor in the awards room at the Orange British Academy Film Awards at the Royal Opera House on February 10, 2008 in London, England.
Academy Awards
6801 Hollywood Blvd, Hollywood, CA 90028, United States
Daniel Day-Lewis poses in the press room during the 80th Annual Academy Awards at the Kodak Theatre on February 24, 2008 in Los Angeles, California.
Golden Globes
9876 Wilshire Blvd, Beverly Hills, CA 90210, United States
Actor Daniel Day-Lewis, winner of Best Actor in a Motion Picture for "Lincoln," poses in the press room during the 70th Annual Golden Globe Awards held at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on January 13, 2013 in Beverly Hills, California.
AACTA International Award
The Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts Awards that Daniel Day-Lewis received in 2013.
BAFTA/LA Britannia Awards
9876 Wilshire Blvd, Beverly Hills, CA 90210, United States
Daniel Day-Lewis accepts The Stanley Kubrick Britannia Award for Excellence in Film onstage at the 2012 BAFTA Los Angeles Britannia Awards Presented By BBC AMERICA at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on November 7, 2012 in Beverly Hills, California.
Broadcast Film Critics Association Awards
665 W Jefferson Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90007, United States
ActorDaniel Day Lewis accepts the award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role onstage during the 19th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards at The Shrine Auditorium on January 27, 2013 in Los Angeles, California.
9876 Wilshire Blvd, Beverly Hills, CA 90210, United States
Daniel Day-Lewis accepts The Stanley Kubrick Britannia Award for Excellence in Film onstage at the 2012 BAFTA Los Angeles Britannia Awards Presented By BBC AMERICA at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on November 7, 2012 in Beverly Hills, California.
9876 Wilshire Blvd, Beverly Hills, CA 90210, United States
Actor Daniel Day-Lewis, winner of Best Actor in a Motion Picture for "Lincoln," poses in the press room during the 70th Annual Golden Globe Awards held at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on January 13, 2013 in Beverly Hills, California.
1755 N Highland Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90028, United States
Daniel Day-Lewis, winner of the Best Actor award for "Lincoln," poses in the press room during the Oscars held at Loews Hollywood Hotel on February 24, 2013 in Hollywood, California.
665 W Jefferson Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90007, United States
ActorDaniel Day Lewis accepts the award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role onstage during the 19th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards at The Shrine Auditorium on January 27, 2013 in Los Angeles, California.
665 W Jefferson Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90007, United States
Daniel Day-Lewis poses in the press room during the 19th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards held at The Shrine Auditorium on January 27, 2013 in Los Angeles, California.
Bow St, Covent Garden, London WC2E 9DD, United Kingdom
Actor Daniel Day Lewis poses with the award for Best Actor in the awards room at the Orange British Academy Film Awards at the Royal Opera House on February 10, 2008 in London, England.
Daniel Day-Lewis, writer, director and producer Paul Thomas Anderson and actors Lesley Manville and Vicky Krieps attend The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences Official Academy Screening of Phantom Thread at MOMA on December 12, 2017 in New York City.
Actor Daniel Day-Lewis and director Rebecca Miller attend the after party for the screening of Sony Pictures Classics' "Maggie's Plan" hosted by Montblanc and The Cinema Society with Mastro Dobel & Kim Crawford Wines at Laduree Soho on May 5, 2016 in New York City.
6925 Hollywood Blvd, Hollywood, CA 90028, United States
Daniel Day-Lewis and director Steven Spielberg arrive at the "Lincoln" premiere during AFI Fest 2012 presented by Audi at Grauman's Chinese Theatre on November 8, 2012 in Hollywood, California.
Daniel Day-Lewis, in full Sir Daniel Michael Blake Day-Lewis, is a British actor known for his on-screen intensity and for his exhaustive preparation for roles. He worked at the Royal Shakespeare Company and playing Romeo in Romeo and Juliet and Flute in A Midsummer Night's Dream. Day-Lewis starred in such films as My Beautiful Laundrette, A Room with a View, The Last of the Mohicans and Phantom Thread.
Background
Daniel Michael Blake Day-Lewis was born on 29 April 1957, in Kensington, London, the second child of poet Cecil Day-Lewis and his second wife, actress Jill Balcon. His older sister, Tamasin Day-Lewis is a television chef and food critic.
His father, who was born in the Irish town of Ballintubbert, County Laois, was of Protestant Anglo-Irish descent, lived in England from the age of two, and was appointed Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom. Day-Lewis's mother was Jewish; her ancestors were immigrants to England in the late 19th century, from Latvia and Poland. His maternal grandfather, Sir Michael Balcon, became the head of Ealing Studios, helping develop the new British film industry. Daniel and his older sister did not see much of their older two half-brothers, who had been teenagers when Day-Lewis's father divorced their mother.
Living in Greenwich, Day-Lewis had to deal with tough South London children. Identified as Jewish and "posh", he was often bullied. He mastered the local accent and mannerisms, and credits that as being his first convincing performance. Later in life, he has been known to speak of himself as very much a disorderly character in his younger years, often in trouble for shoplifting and other petty crimes.
For a few weeks in 1972, the Day-Lewis family lived at Lemmons, the north London home of Kingsley Amis and Elizabeth Jane Howard. Day-Lewis's father had pancreatic cancer, and Howard invited the family to Lemmons as a place they could use to rest and recuperate. His father died there in May of that year.
Education
In 1968, Day-Lewis's parents, finding his behaviour to be too wild, sent him as a boarder to the independent Sevenoaks School in Kent. However, his disdain for the school grew, and after two years at Sevenoaks, he was transferred to another independent school, Bedales in Petersfield, Hampshire. His sister was already a student there, and it had a more relaxed and creative ethos. 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 vandalise expensive cars parked outside his local church.
By the time he left Bedales in 1975, Day-Lewis's unruly attitude had diminished and he needed to make a career choice. Although he had excelled on stage at the National Youth Theatre in London, he applied for a five-year apprenticeship as a cabinet-maker. He was rejected due to lack of experience. He was accepted at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, which he attended for three years along with Miranda Richardson, eventually performing at the Bristol Old Vic itself.
On 15 July 2010, Day-Lewis received an honorary doctorate in letters from the University of Bristol, in part because of his attendance of the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School in his youth.
After his years at the Bristol Old Vic and several stage appearances, Day-Lewis landed a small film role in Gandhi (1982). He continued to appear in films and plays for several years, during which time he developed into one of the most skilled actors in the profession. Applying the same ethos to drama as he did to woodworking, Day-Lewis became a method actor, devoting himself physically, psychologically, and emotionally to getting in character for each of his roles.
Daniel Day-Lewis shifted between theater and film for most of the early 1980s, joining the Royal Shakespeare Company and appearing alongside stars Anthony Hopkins and Sir Laurence Olivier in the 1984 film The Bounty. In 1986, Day-Lewis' career started to take off with his acclaimed role in A Room with a View (1986). His first leading role came shortly after, in 1987, when he starred opposite Juliette Binoche in The Unbearable Lightness of Being. To prepare for the role, Day-Lewis learned Czech, and he subsequently stayed in character for the entire eight-month shoot.
Day-Lewis also dove deep into his next role, playing Christy Brown in My Left Foot (1989). To get into character, the actor stayed in a wheelchair, even off-camera, requiring the crew to move him around and injuring two ribs embodying his character's paralysis. His hard work paid off when he took home an Oscar and a British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) Best Actor Award, among a slew of other accolades.
Following this success, Day-Lewis took a break from Hollywood and returned to the stage for several years. In 1992, he returned to film with a starring role in Last of the Mohicans. His second Academy Award nomination was for his performance in the popular In the Name of the Father (1993). Day-Lewis' next two movies were commercially successful period pieces, The Age of Innocence (1993) and The Crucible (1996).
After shooting the film The Boxer in 1997, Day-Lewis unexpectedly moved to Italy to become an apprentice to a shoemaker, effectively cutting himself off from celebrity life. Day-Lewis has been reluctant to talk about his time out of the public eye, saying, "it was a period of my life that I had a right to without any intervention of that kind." In 2002, though, he was back in front of the camera for a much-lauded performance as Bill the Butcher in Martin Scorsese's Gangs of New York. Day-Lewis rounded up another Oscar nomination for his role as the knife-wielding gangster and won another BAFTA for best actor.
Day-Lewis gave another stunning performance in the 2007 film There Will Be Blood. An extended period of time was needed to raise funds for the film, which gave the actor two whole years in which to prepare for his role playing an 1880s prospector, which earned him another Academy Award for Best Actor.
Day-Lewis landed a starring role in the 2009 film Nine, by director Rob Marshall. Once again, his performance was met with critical acclaim and award nominations. The actor is known for taking long hiatuses between films, breaking the mold of a leading man who churns out a hit every year.
In 2012, Day-Lewis took on another challenging part, playing Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States, in the Steven Spielberg-directed biopic Lincoln, which was based on the book by Doris Kearns Goodwin. The cast also included Sally Field as his wife, Mary Todd Lincoln, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt as his son Robert. Day-Lewis' portrayal of Lincoln earned him his third Academy Award for Best Actor.
In June 2017, the acclaimed actor shocked the world when he announced his retirement. The Oscar winner's final film, Phantom Thread, is a period drama about the London fashion world. The feature was directed by Paul Thomas Anderson and released on December 25, 2017.
Late that year, prior to his Golden Globe and Oscar nominations for his lead role in Phantom Thread, Day-Lewis opened up a bit about the process that drove him to retire from the profession. "Before making the film, I didn’t know I was going to stop acting," he told W Magazine. "I do know that Paul and I laughed a lot before we made the movie. And then we stopped laughing because we were both overwhelmed by a sense of sadness. That took us by surprise: We didn’t realize what we had given birth to. It was hard to live with."
Day-Lewis revealed he had flirted with quitting for a long time, one reason he took such lengthy breaks between roles. "I have great sadness," he said. "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."
Day-Lewis has stated that he had "no real religious education", and that he "suppose" he is "a die-hard agnostic".
Politics
Day-Lewis is a keen observer of society and political life, though he seems to keep his personal views to himself. He can talk politics, but his comments aren’t necessarily ideological, and he doesn’t really want to talk about it. In fact, this star is notoriously private.
Day-Lewis is an international man, holding dual citizenship in both England and Ireland–both countries he claims to love and call home. However, he does much of his work in the U.S., aspects of which he also proclaims to love. Comparing England and the U.S., he said: "England is obsessed with where you came from, and they are determined to keep you in that place, be it in a drawing room or in the gutter. The great tradition of liberalism in England is essentially a sponge that absorbs all possibility of change. America looked different to me: the idea of America as a place of infinite possibilities was defined for me through the movies."
In the U.S. political arena, Day-Lewis is, at the very least, aware of what’s going on. He commented on the difficulties and pressures of Obama’s presidency, poked a little fun at Clint Eastwood’s infamous "invisible Obama" performance at the 2012 Republican National Convention and after making a film about Abraham Lincoln, Day-Lewis commented that modern-day politics was too influenced by television. He said: "The difference (between political life in Lincoln’s time and today) was made by the standardized machine of television, which reduces everything to platitudes and simple pictures."
Views
Despite his traditional training at the Bristol Old Vic, Day-Lewis is considered a method actor, known for his constant devotion to and research of his roles. He would often remain completely in character throughout the shooting schedules of his films, even to the point of adversely affecting his health. He is one of the most selective actors in the film industry. Protective of his private life, he rarely gives interviews, and makes very few public appearances.
Quotations:
"I suppose I have a highly developed capacity for self-delusion, so it's no problem for me to believe that I'm somebody else."
"At a certain age it just became apparent to me that this was probably the work that I would have to do."
"I would wish for any one of my colleagues to have the experience of working with Martin Scorsese once in their lifetime."
"I think I have a strange relationship with time. I'm not really aware of that time passing. I don't feel that I'm wasteful with time. But I'm not aware of it passing."
"I see a lot of movies. I love films as a spectator, and that's never obscured by the part of me that does the work myself. I just love going to the movies."
Membership
Daniel Day-Lewis is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In July 2015, he became the Honorary President of the Poetry Archive.
In June 2017, Day-Lewis became a patron of the Wilfred Owen Association. Day-Lewis's association with Wilfred Owen began with his father, Cecil Day-Lewis, who edited Owen's poetry in the 1960s and his mother, Jill Balcon, who was vice-president of the Wilfred Owen Association until her death in 2009.
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Poetry Archive
July, 2015
Wilfred Owen Association
June, 2017
Personality
During the filming of The Ballad of Jack and Rose in 2005, Day-Lewis elected to live in a hut on the beach apart from his family, friends, crew, and cast.
Playing Christy Brown in My Left Foot, he flatly refused to leave the wheelchair throughout the entire film-making process. They say that during the filming, Daniel even broke two ribs due to the awkward maneuver in a wheelchair, and once even caused a nervous breakdown of his agent, as communicated with her without leaving the image of Christy Brown.
After training for 18 months with professional boxing trainer Barry McGuigan for his 1997 film The Boxer, McGuigan believed that Day-Lewis could actually compete as a professional middleweight fighter.
For the role of Hawkeye in the Michael Mann’s film Last of the Mohicans, the actor was engaged in the gym for a long time, sitting on a special diet and even built a canoe and learned to hunt.
Before taking the infamous role of Bill the Butcher in Gangs of New York, Day-Lewis was living in Florence, Italy working as a cobbler. He also spent a lot of time in the butcher shop. To get psyched up for the role of Bill the Butcher, Day-Lewis resorted to some fairly modern techniques—in order to channel the rage he needed, he listened to the music of Eminem.
Day-Lewis read over 100 books on Abraham Lincoln to prepare for the title role in the 2012 movie Lincoln.
Daniel is well known for being able to learn new accents very quickly.
Quotes from others about the person
John Hartoch, Day-Lewis's acting teacher at Bristol Old Vic: "There was something about him even then. He was quiet and polite, but he was clearly focused on his acting – he had a burning quality. He seemed to have something burning beneath the surface. There was a lot going on beneath that quiet appearance. There was one performance in particular, when the students put on a play called Class Energy, when he really seemed to shine–and it became obvious to us, the staff, that we had someone rather special on our hands."
Interests
Daniel has plenty of interests to keep him busy, including woodworking, painting and scriptwriting, though he admitted to being unsure of himself as he moved forward from the career that made him world famous.
Sport & Clubs
Daniel is a supporter of South East London football club Millwall.
Connections
Protective of his privacy, Day-Lewis described his life as a "lifelong study in evasion". He had a relationship with French actress Isabelle Adjani that lasted six years, eventually ending after a split and reconciliation. Their son, Gabriel-Kane Day-Lewis, was born on April 9, 1995, in New York City, a few 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 married later that year, on 13 November 1996. The couple have two sons - Ronan Cal Day-Lewis (born 1998), and Cashel Blake Day-Lewis (born 2002). They divide their time between their homes in Manhattan, New York, and Annamoe, County Wicklow, Ireland.