The role Daniel Day-Lewis thought was “not so good for my physical or mental health”
Method acting is a pretty divisive form of performance, involving movie stars dedicating their lives to totally embodying their respective roles, mentally and physically. Actors like Marlon Brando, Jared Leto, Heath Ledger, Natalie Portman, Joaquin Phoenix and Christian Bale are known for their method acting antics, but truthfully it is Daniel Day-Lewis who has been the most influential, with his performances resulting in three Academy Awards.
Rising to popularity in the industry throughout the early 1980s, Day-Lewis quickly became an icon of cinema, appearing in the Stephen Frears movie My Beautiful Laundrette and James Ivory’s A Room with a View. Only four years later, the actor would take home his first Academy Award, winning for his performance as the real-life artist Christy Brown, who thrived despite having cerebral palsy, in the 1989 movie My Left Foot.
From this moment on, Hollywood very much sat up and took notice, starring in the Michael Mann adventure flick The Last of the Mohicans in 1992. The next year, Day-Lewis worked with Martin Scorsese for the first time, collaborating on the period piece The Age of Innocence, several years before he would take on his most challenging role in 2002’s Gangs of New York.
Day-Lewis had dedicated himself to the role of Christy Brown many years before, demanding that crew members carry him around on set as he was ‘disabled’ in a dedicated method acting performance, and for the role of Bill the Butcher in Gangs of New York, the actor went to similar lengths.
Training as a butcher in order to give a more authentic performance, the actor caught pneumonia on the set of the movie after refusing to change his thin coat in the cold weather, as thicker coats didn’t exist in the 19th century. Remarkably, Day-Lewis even admitted to walking around Rome, where the movie was being shot, picking fights with random strangers, as per his character’s temperament.
“I had to do my preparation,” he exclaimed in an interview with The Independent, “And I will admit that I went mad, totally mad. I remembered the days of fighting on the Millwall terraces, and they stood me in good stead for Bill the Butcher. He was a bit of a punk, a marvellous character and a joy to be – but not so good for my physical or mental health.”
Day-Lewis starred in an all-star cast in Gangs of New York, appearing alongside the likes of Leonardo DiCaprio, Cameron Diaz, Liam Neeson and Brendan Gleeson. Directed by Scorsese, from a screenplay by Jay Cocks, Steven Zaillian and Kenneth Lonergan, the film told the story of Amsterdam Vallon, a man who returns to New York City to seek revenge on his father’s killer, Bill the Butcher.
Speaking about his approach to method acting, Day-Lewis later added in the interview: “You go to these great lengths to imagine another world and time and imagine a man, like [Daniel] Plainview, living in those times – and having spent your imagination on that, it seems more fun to live there all the time than jumping in and out…That is the playground you’ve created, so why not stay there and play?”.
