The 1986 cult classic Daniel Day-Lewis was rejected for: “He would have been very good, too”
It’s been decades since Daniel Day-Lewis auditioned for anything, which is generally what happens when you repeatedly prove yourself to be one of the greatest actors of all time.
Obviously, just like any aspiring thespian, he had to start from the bottom, which meant he needed to earn his stripes before having the luxury of being first choice. He’s always been selective, but it isn’t often he throws his hat into the ring for a part, only to have it thrown right back at him.
It did happen once, though, and it was a star-maker for the guy who played the role instead. That said, this was the mid-1980s, when the most prominent big-screen gig of Day-Lewis’ nascent career was playing fifth fiddle, well behind Anthony Hopkins and Mel Gibson, in Roger Donaldson’s The Bounty.
1985 would be his breakthrough year, with a pair of acclaimed performances in My Beautiful Laundrette and A Room with a View designating him as one of British cinema’s brightest young talents, and he was keen to seize that opportunity and push himself to the next level. He did eventually, but he could have done it sooner.
Two years later, Philip Kaufman’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being would mark the first time his strict adherence to the method became a story of its own, and by that time, Gary Oldman had already blown everyone away with his titular turn in Alex Cox’s Sid and Nancy, which Day-Lewis had desperately wanted.
Ironically, Oldman didn’t really want it to begin with, being so disinterested that he turned it down twice before the director finally changed his mind. After finally relenting, Sid Vicious turned out to be his breakthrough leading role, and he hasn’t looked back since.
Rumours swirled for years that Day-Lewis wanted to play the Sex Pistols bassist, but since he’d never confirmed or denied it, nobody really knew for sure whether it was true or not. At least, not until Cox finally let the cat out of the bag, explaining why he always believed Oldman to be the superior candidate.
“Yes,” he said, confirming the long-standing whispers. “And I think he would have been very good, too. He has a lot of soul and would probably have handled the romantic aspect better. But Gary was a Bermondsey boy; from the same part of London, the same world of Sid, and he really understood the ambitious aspect, the desperate need to get out of South London at all costs.”
It was a choice that would be a hypothetical dream scenario for casting directors across the industry in the years and decades to come: do you want Daniel Day-Lewis or Gary Oldman to play the lead role in your movie? Cox chose the latter, but it’s safe to say the former still did alright for himself in the long run.
