Daniel Day-Lewis

Biography

In 1989, at the National Theatre in London, Day-Lewis played Hamlet. Midway through a performance, in the scene with his father’s ghost, he broke down sobbing, left the stage and did not return to the role. He has not appeared on stage since.

He was born on 29 April 1957 in Kensington, London, the second child of the poet Cecil Day-Lewis, later Poet Laureate, and the actress Jill Balcon. Her father, Sir Michael Balcon, was head of Ealing Studios. When the boy was two, the family moved to Greenwich. At his local primary school he was bullied for being Jewish and “posh”; he picked up the south London accent and mannerisms, and counted this as his first successful performance. Later he said himself that as a child he had been in trouble for petty shoplifting.

In 1968 his parents sent him to Sevenoaks School in Kent. There he found his three interests: woodworking, acting and fishing. Two years later he was transferred to Bedales in Petersfield, Hampshire, where his sister was a pupil and the atmosphere was more relaxed. At fourteen he played a vandal in the film “Sunday Bloody Sunday” (uncredited); by his own account it was “heaven”, because he was paid two pounds to vandalise expensive cars parked outside a local church. His father died in May 1972.

He left school in 1975. He had already stood out on the stage of the National Youth Theatre, but he applied for a five-year cabinet-making apprenticeship. He was rejected for lack of experience. He then entered the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School and studied there for three years alongside Miranda Richardson. At one point he was understudy to Pete Postlethwaite, with whom he later appeared in the film “In the Name of the Father”.

In the early 1980s he alternated between theatre and television, appearing in BBC television films. In “Gandhi” (1982) he has a small part as Colin, a street thug, and in “The Bounty” (1984) he played the first mate. With the Royal Shakespeare Company he played Romeo and Flute in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”. His first critical recognition came in 1985 with “My Beautiful Laundrette”, in which he played Johnny, a young London punk; the same year came “A Room with a View”, with the part of the prim Cecil Vyse. The National Board of Review in the United States honoured both performances with its award for best supporting actor. In “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” (1988) he played a leading role for the first time, a Czech surgeon, and during eight months of shooting he learned Czech.

What he would call his own method is what he showed in Jim Sheridan’s “My Left Foot” (1989): he played Christy Brown, a writer and painter who, because of cerebral palsy, could control only his left foot. The actor spent long periods at the Sandymount School Clinic in Dublin, befriending people with disabilities, and on set he was moved about in a wheelchair while the crew spoon-fed him. He won the Academy Award and the BAFTA, and at thirty-two became the youngest English actor to win the Oscar in that category.

In the 1990s the roles followed one after another. For “The Last of the Mohicans” (1992) he learned to live in the forest, to hunt and to make canoes, and he never put down his long rifle. For “In the Name of the Father” he lost fourteen kilograms, kept his Northern Irish accent on and off the set, and asked the crew to throw cold water over him and treat him roughly. That role, Gerry Conlon of the Guildford Four, wrongly convicted of a bombing, brought him a second Oscar nomination. For Martin Scorsese’s “The Age of Innocence” he spent two months walking around New York in the clothes of the 1870s, with a top hat and cane. For “The Boxer” he trained with the former world champion Barry McGuigan, who thought Day-Lewis could have boxed professionally.

After “The Boxer” he took a break, moved to Florence and for several years trained under the shoemaker Stefano Bemer. He returned to film with Scorsese in “Gangs of New York” (2002), playing the gang leader Bill the Butcher, learning knife-throwing from circus performers and never leaving character between takes. The role brought a third Oscar nomination and a second BAFTA. Then came Rebecca Miller’s “The Ballad of Jack and Rose” and Paul Thomas Anderson’s “There Will Be Blood” (2007), in which he played the oilman Daniel Plainview. For it he won the Oscar, the BAFTA, the Golden Globe and the Screen Actors Guild Award, which he dedicated to Heath Ledger. In 2009 he appeared in the musical “Nine”, playing the film director Guido Contini.

For Steven Spielberg’s “Lincoln” (2012) he spent a full year preparing, read more than a hundred books and worked with a make-up artist; on set he spoke in Lincoln’s voice and asked his British colleagues not to chat with him. At the 85th Academy Awards he became the first actor to win three Oscars for best actor.

After that win he stopped making films for five years and lived on a farm in County Wicklow. In 2014 he was made a Knight Bachelor for services to drama.

He returned in Anderson’s “Phantom Thread” (2017), playing the London dressmaker Reynolds Woodcock, and received another Oscar nomination. Before the film’s release, in June 2017, his spokesperson announced that the actor was retiring. In 2024 it was announced that he would return: he starred in “Anemone”, the first film directed by his son Ronan Day-Lewis, and co-wrote the script with him. The world premiere took place at the New York Film Festival in 2025.