Daniel Day-Lewis starred in only 5 films since 1998
2013 Oscar makes him the only male actor in history to gather three wins in the leading category.
LOS ANGELES (Web Desk) - Daniel Michael Blake Day-Lewis (born 29 April 1957) is an English actor with both British and Irish citizenship.
He was born and grew up in London, the son of Poet Laureate Cecil Day-Lewis and actress Jill Balcon. Despite his traditional actor training at the Bristol Old Vic, he is considered to be a method actor, known for his constant devotion to and research of his roles.
He often remains completely in character for the duration of the shooting schedules of his films, even to the point of adversely affecting his health.
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.
One of the most acclaimed actors of his generation, his work has earned numerous awards, including five nominations for the Academy Awards, which resulted in three wins, respectively, for his portrayals of Christy Brown in My Left Foot (1989), Daniel Plainview in There Will Be Blood (2007), and Abraham Lincoln in Lincoln (2012), a feat which makes him the only male actor in history to gather three wins in the leading category.
Lewis has also been nominated for six BAFTA Awards, with four wins, three Screen Actors Guild Awards, and three Critic s Choice Awards, as well as garnering seven Golden Globe nominations, winning twice.
Day-Lewis was born in London, the son of poet Cecil Day-Lewis and actress Jill Balcon. His father, who was of Anglo-Irish background, lived mainly in England from the age of two and later became the United Kingdom s Poet Laureate.
His mother was Jewish, and his maternal grandparents families had emigrated to Britain from Latvia and Poland. His maternal grandfather, Sir Michael Balcon, an important figure in the history of British cinema, was the head of Ealing Studios.
Two years after his birth, the family moved to Croom s Hill, Greenwich, south-east London, where Day-Lewis grew up along with his older sister, Tamasin Day-Lewis, who became a documentary filmmaker and television chef.[8]
Living in middle class Greenwich, Day-Lewis found himself among tough South London children, and, being of part Jewish ancestry and "posh", he was often bullied.
He mastered the local accent and mannerisms and credits that with being his first convincing performances.
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.
In 1968, Day-Lewis s parents, finding his behaviour to be too wild, sent him to the independent Sevenoaks School in Kent as a boarder.
Though he detested the school, he was introduced to his three most prominent interests: woodworking, acting, and fishing.
His disdain for the school grew, and after two years at Sevenoaks, he was transferred to another independent school, Bedales in Petersfield, Hampshire, which his sister attended, and which had a more relaxed and creative ethos.
The transfer led to 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.
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.
He 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.[15] During filming, he refused 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.
It was rumoured that he had broken two ribs during filming from assuming a hunched-over position in his wheelchair for so many weeks, something he denied years later at the 2013 Santa Barbara International Film Festival.[16]
Day-Lewis returned to the stage in 1989 to work with Richard Eyre, in Hamlet at the National Theatre, London, 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; he was replaced by Ian Charleson before a then-unknown Jeremy Northam finished what little was left of the production s run. Although the incident was officially attributed to exhaustion, one rumour following the incident was that Day-Lewis had seen the ghost of his own father.
He confirmed on the British celebrity chat show Parkinson that this was true.[18] He has not appeared on stage since.
Day-Lewis rarely discusses his personal life. He had a relationship with French actress Isabelle Adjani, which lasted six years and eventually ended after a split and reconciliation. Their son Gabriel-Kane Day-Lewis was born in 1995 in New York City, several months after the relationship ended.
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. Day-Lewis has stated that he had "no real religious education" and that he "supposes" he is "a die-hard agnostic".
In October 2012, he donated to Oxford University papers belonging to his father, the poet Cecil Day-Lewis, including early drafts of the poet s work and letters from actor John Gielgud and literary figures such as W. H. Auden, Robert Graves, and Philip Larkin.
