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| Birth Name(s) : Daniel Michael Blake Day-Lewis |
Date of Birth: N/A |
| Status:
Single
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Partner:
Rebecca Miller (1996-) |
| Profession:
N/A |
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Full Daniel Day-Lewis Biography
Daniel Michael Blake Day-Lewis (born 29 April 1957) is an Academy-Award winning and Golden Globe-award nominated actor. Born in London, England, he became an Irish citizen in 1993.
After studying at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, Daniel Day-Lewis performed in numerous stage plays and films that gained him an Academy Award, two BAFTA awards, and four Golden Globe nominations. In the midst of his career, he has become known as one of the most selective actors in the film industry, starring in only four movies in the last ten years. He has also been acknowledged for his constant devotion to his roles and copious amounts of research he performs. Often he will remain in character and speak in the accents he has used on screen throughout the entire shooting schedule.
Leaving Bedales in 1975, his unruly attitude had faded and he now had to make a career choice. Although he loved acting and had excelled onstage at the National Youth Theatre, he found something "seedy" about backstage life, and decided to become a cabinet-maker, applying for a five-year apprenticeship. However, because of a lack of experience, he was not accepted. He then applied (and was accepted) at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, which he attended for three years, eventually performing at the Bristol Old Vic itself. (At one point he played understudy to Pete Postlethwaite, whom he would later play opposite in In the Name of the Father, and with whom he shares a brief scene in Last of the Mohicans when he is the arresting officer when Hawkeye is imprisoned for sedition).
The actor was next featured on stage as "The Count" in the stage-play of Dracula where he appeared with his hair dyed blond in a throwback to Nosferatu. He later let his hair grow out to give a frosted "punk look" when he played half of a gay bi-racial couple in My Beautiful Laundrette. Day-Lewis gained further public notice when the film was released simultaneously with a completely different character in A Room with a View (1986), in which he played the effete upper-class fiance of the main character (played by Helena Bonham Carter).
In 1987, Day-Lewis assumed leading man status by starring in Philip Kaufman's The Unbearable Lightness of Being, co-starring Lena Olin and Juliette Binoche, as a Czech doctor whose hyperactive and purely physical sex life is thrown into disarray when he allows himself to become emotionally involved with a woman. During the eight-month shoot he learned Czech and first began to refuse to break character on or off the set for the entire shooting schedule.
Playing a severely paralyzed character onscreen, offscreen Day-Lewis had to be wheeled 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 Christy Brown's life, including the embarrassments. He also broke two ribs during filming from assuming a hunched-over position in his wheelchair for so many weeks.
Daniel Day-Lewis returned to the stage to work with Richard Eyre, as Hamlet at the National Theatre, 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; his understudy (a then unknown Jeremy Northam) finished what little was left of the production's run. One rumour following the incident was that Day-Lewis had seen the ghost of his own father, although the incident was officially attributed to exhaustion. He confirmed on the top British celebrity chat show 'Parkinson' on ITV that this rumour was true. He has not appeared on stage since.
In 1992, three years after his Oscar win, The Last of the Mohicans was released. Day-Lewis' character research for this film was well-publicized; he reportedly underwent rigorous weight training and learned to live off the land and forest where his character lived, camping, hunting and fishing. He even carried a Kentucky rifle at all times during filming in order to remain in character and learned how to skin animals.
In 2006, it was reported in Variety that Paul Thomas Anderson's next film would be an adaptation of the controversial novel Oil!, renamed There Will Be Blood and starring Day-Lewis.
Because of his desire for privacy, Day-Lewis rarely talks publicly about his personal life, although he had what he would later describe as "the most on-off relationship in the world" with French actress Isabelle Adjani. The strained relationship lasted six years and eventually ended when Adjani notified Day-Lewis, reportedly by fax, that she was pregnant. Gabriel-Kane Day-Lewis was born in 1995 in New York, months after the relationship between the two actors had 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 fell in love and were married two weeks before the film's release. The couple have two sons, Ronan (born June 14, 1998), and Cashel (born May 2002) and divide their time between their homes in the US, and Ireland. |
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