The Oscar-winning role Daniel Day-Lewis turned down: “We were so pissed off”
Britain has given us some of the greatest actors of all time, from Laurence Olivier and Helen Mirren to Tilda Swinton and Daniel Day-Lewis. The latter has hardly made a misstep in his career, frequently starring in movies that have earned him significant acclaim and prestigious awards, such as three Oscars.
He made his first on-screen appearance as an uncredited extra in Sunday Bloody Sunday, a classic British film by John Schlesinger. In many ways, it can be argued that this set the tone for Day-Lewis’ career, with the actor eventually booking roles in other landmark British movies just over a decade later. He appeared in My Beautiful Laundrette in 1985, which saw him play a former right-wing punk who begins a relationship with a Pakistani man.
Day-Lewis was praised for his performance, and he continued to appear in acclaimed roles in the years that followed, such as A Room With A View and The Unbearable Lightness of Being. He rose to further prominence after starring in My Left Foot, using method acting skills to portray Christy Brown, a writer and artist with cerebral palsy. With his award-winning performance exposing his incredible acting skills to an even wider audience, he continued to impress viewers with roles in movies like The Last of the Mohicans and The Age of Innocence.
Now a Hollywood star, Day-Lewis was in demand, but he has always been very selective with the parts he takes on. Thus, there have been instances when he has turned down roles that he could’ve had great success with, although this has never affected his status as one of the industry’s most celebrated stars. In 1993, he appeared in Jim Sheridan’s In the Name of the Father, which earned him an Oscar nomination for his stunning performance as Gerry Conlon.
Yet, he lost out on winning the prize to Tom Hanks for his role in Philadelphia. The American actor was dominating Hollywood during this time, and would even win ‘Best Actor’ again the following year for Forrest Gump. Philadelphia was a drastically different movie to Forrest Gump, though, and Hanks almost didn’t get the part.
Directed by Jonathan Demme, Philadelphia follows a gay man who seeks to sue his boss after he is fired for having AIDs. It was a monumental film that addressed the AIDs crisis in the mainstream – something that was rare during the early 1990s. Before Hanks was offered the part, which would help to propel him to even higher heights, Day-Lewis was offered the role.
In an interview, Philadelphia writer Ron Nyswaner revealed, “Tom Hanks really wanted to play Andrew Beckett,” but he had other ideas in mind. “Jonathan and I, and the producers, had been thinking of more, perhaps, conventional casting. Honestly, it was Daniel Day-Lewis. And Daniel Day-Lewis passed. We were so pissed off… How dare he! This is going to be such an important picture!”
However, once Hanks and Demme met up and discussed the job, with the actor telling him, “I think I can do this,” he was given the role, which he certainly played with precision. It is interesting to imagine Day-Lewis playing the part, but he was far too busy preparing himself for the gripping In the Name of the Father, which followed the wrongly convicted Guildford Four.
