The movie Daniel Day-Lewis regretted making: “I’d made a fundamental error”
When discussing the best actors of all time, the conversation invariably ends up including Daniel Day-Lewis.
The British star is an undisputed master, capable of generating emotion in a uniquely captivating manner. His dedication to the roles he plays is legendary; he is the standard bearer for method acting, as one of its most intense and prolific practitioners. He’s got three ‘Best Actor’ Oscars (more than anyone else in history) and countless remarkable examples of his work to back up any claims of his success.
However, even the greats get it wrong sometimes. He can take the whole ‘method’ thing too far sometimes, refusing to leave his wheelchair in between takes while making My Left Foot, or actually learning how to trap and skin animals for The Last of the Mohicans. He demanded to know exactly how tall Abraham Lincoln was when playing him for Steven Spielberg, which even he thought was too much in hindsight.
Sometimes it’s not the way Day-Lewis goes about his work that he regrets, but rather the work itself. Speaking to The New York Times, the celebrated star spoke about some of the low points of his extraordinary career. This included the making of The Unbearable Lightness of Being, the 1988 movie adaptation of Milan Kundera’s seminal novel. According to Day-Lewis, he should never have agreed to take the job in the first place.
“I was hopelessly at sea,” he recalled with a certain air of melancholy. “I was extremely unhappy most of the time. I think I probably felt I’d made a fundamental error in agreeing to do that movie even though it was the part and the film that everyone wanted to do. And God help us, that is, in itself, a reason not to do something.”
Set in 1968, the story of the novel centres around Tomas, a successful brain surgeon living in Czechoslovakia. Despite already being involved with another woman, he takes a new lover, Tereza, right before the invasion of the country by four nations involved in the Warsaw Pact. It is regarded as a modern classic, a masterpiece of the existential genre. The film version, which was directed by Philip Kaufman, featured Day-Lewis as Tomas and Juliette Binoche as Tereza. It scored well amongst critics and even had Kundera’s blessing, yet there was clearly something missing in the eyes of its male lead.
This was Day-Lewis’ first leading role, as well as the first one that he allowed himself to get truly lost in. He learned Czech, even though the film was in English, and refused to step out of the Tomas persona even when he wasn’t being filmed. Though he eventually became proficient in it, this hyper-involved style of acting takes its toll both mentally and physically. It would eventually contribute to him taking time away from acting between 1997 and 2000. Perhaps it was this introduction to method acting, plus the stress of leading a production for the first time, that has led to Day-Lewis looking back on this movie with a certain degree of lament.
Most actors are perfectionists; the great ones even more so. What Day-Lewis considers a mistake is, for most people, a triumph. He’s being way too hard on himself here, but are you going to be the one to tell him that? Didn’t think so.
