A look at one of world’s finest actors
An intensely private man, Daniel Day-Lewis bids farewell to acting
When Daniel Day-Lewis first braved the North American media some 30 years ago, he provided an unexpected splash of exoticism with his long black hair, faded jeans and a trendy black shirt that cut a striking contrast with the red bandana around his neck.
As he seated himself at the interview table and awaited our questions, he seemed to be a fresh and robust presence — until he opened his mouth.
He was so painfully shy that he rarely spoke above a whisper. Some of us had been wise enough to place our recorders as close to him as possible. Other journalists, attempting to transcribe his thoughts later, were horrified to discover they had captured very little. There was the sense even then this was an intensely private man who would rather have been anywhere other than in this place, dutifully submitting to the rigours of a weekend press junket.
And it was the private DayLewis who was still at the forefront the other day when he announced, through a spokesman, that he was retiring from acting.
“Daniel Day-Lewis will no longer be working as an actor,” that spokesman told the world. “This is a private decision, and neither he nor his representatives will make any further comment on the subject.”
His genius as an artist has always been marked by an intensity bordering on obsessiveness. He confined his lanky frame to a wheelchair for many weeks in preparation for his Oscarwinning performance as Irish quadriplegic Christy Brown in My Left Foot, staying in character even in a public place like a restaurant where he insisted on being spoon-fed his meal.
“Day-Lewis took the character into real areas of danger,” film historian David Thomson commented later. “He made Christy fearsome and uncontainable.”
When he accepted the role of Hawkeye in The Last Of The Mohicans, Day-Lewis prepared by living in the wilderness for six months and tracking and skinning animals. And during the winter shoot of Lincoln, which led to his third Academy Award, he continued speaking in Honest Abe’s high-pitched voice even when he was off camera.
Tabloid journalism, of course feeds on such eccentricities. But it’s doubtful whether Daniel Day-Lewis has ever seen his behaviour as anything out of the ordinary. In 1992, still shy with reporters but unfailingly courteous as always, he was on hand to talk about The Last Of The Mohicans, and in the process told us a great deal both about his unique approach to acting but also his inner creative conflicts.
“You need to make every film in your own intimate and private way,” he said back then. “The paradox, of course, is that with a big film ... the odds are stacked against you. You have to fight ferociously for every moment of privacy and quietness and concentration because of this huge production paraphernalia around you.”
It was this conflict that drove him away from acting after the release of The Boxer in 1997.
“I’m told that five years have passed,” he exclaimed in some bewilderment in 2002 after returning to the screen in Gangs of New York. By this time, he was more relaxed with reporters, but his need for privacy was still palpable. It was an open secret by then that he had worked as an apprentice cobbler in Italy during his absence, but it was not something he wished to discuss. “I’ve always felt from an early stage that to do the work that I do, I would also need to spend time not doing it.”
Day-Lewis has one final film — Phantom Thread — awaiting release later this year. But how seriously can we take his decision to retire at the age of 60? Will he be content to retreat to his Irish estate and continue serving another obsession — the breeding of prize sheep?
Well, he was firm in his resolve to abandon stage acting more than two decades ago after he was forced to curtail his performance as Hamlet for Britain’s National Theatre. Day-Lewis reportedly withdrew from the run after seeing visions of his dead father, poet C. Day-Lewis, during performances: he would later admit that “when people are exhausted strange things happen” — and the role of Hamlet was definitely exhausting. But he would also confide to reporters that playing Hamlet made him acutely conscious of his own vulnerability. “It’s part of my job to make myself vulnerable,” he confessed, “and for the most part, I’m able to deal with the consequences of that.”
There’s always been the sense throughout his career that Day-Lewis is on the watch for fault lines in his creative being that might cause him more damage than he can cope with. And even though he has grown more at ease with reporters over the years, the need to raise the privacy wall when necessary has remained.