The movie Daniel Day-Lewis desperately wanted an Oscar for: “It would be a delight”
Winning an Oscar is often seen as the ultimate triumph in Hollywood, and only a few actors are lucky enough to have won several throughout their careers, with Katharine Hepburn holding the world record for the most, having collected four golden statuettes, her first coming in 1933 and her last in 1981.
Then there are just six actors who have won three, and four of these are still alive, making them rivals to Hepburn’s impressive title, and one of them is of course Daniel Day-Lewis, who won his first Academy Award back in 1989 for My Left Foot, in which he played Christy Brown, a disabled artist who painted and wrote using just his foot.
He went into full method-acting mode for the part, requesting that crew members carry him about and spoon-feed him his meals, which certainly pissed off a lot of people with this unusual approach to acting, but it clearly worked. The performance helped to propel him to widespread recognition, and his experience of the ‘90s was subsequently one of endless opportunities and glittering success.
Choosing to be selective in his projects, the actor appeared in movies like The Age of Innocence, In the Name of the Father, and The Last of the Mohicans, all of which only proved to elevate his star power even further, such that it felt like no matter what project he took on, he was putting himself in the running for an Oscar nomination.
He might have lost out to Tom Hanks when he was nominated for In the Name of the Father, but within a few years, he was nominated once again, and there was a high chance it could be his second Oscar win.
It was 2002, and Day-Lewis had been cast in Martin Scorsese’s Gangs of New York, a historical crime film with a stacked cast, which of course included Leonardo DiCaprio and wound up earning ten nominations from the Academy, including ‘Best Picture’, ‘Best Director’, and ‘Best Actor’. Day-Lewis really wanted to win following his defeat against Hanks, even though he had some stiff competition this time in the form of Jack Nicholson, Nicolas Cage, Michael Caine, and Adrien Brody.
It was the last who won the prize for The Pianist, leaving Day-Lewis an Oscar loser once again, but he could hardly be disappointed, considering that he already had an Academy Award, yet he still felt that painful sting of defeat. Before the event, he had told the Los Angeles Daily News, “It would be a delight. I wouldn’t pretend not to be thrilled about it, but more than anything, my fingers are crossed for Martin.”
“I don’t know if it will happen this year, but that would give me as much pleasure as anything,” he added. Scorsese sadly didn’t win, either, losing out to Roman Polanski, also for The Pianist; luckily for Day-Lewis, though, he managed to win his next two Oscar nominations, the first being for There Will Be Blood, and the next for Lincoln.
He might have missed out on taking home the prize for Phantom Thread, but with the actor dusting off his acting shoes and returning next year with a role in Anemone, perhaps Day-Lewis will scoop up another Oscar and join Hepburn in the famed hall.
