Daniel Day-Lewis takes his work extremely seriously, says Xan Brooks in the London Guardian. The famously intense actor knows no boundaries in throwing himself into his roles. He broke two ribs while contorting himself as a man with cerebral palsy in My Left Foot, and lived in the woods to get into character for The Last of the Mohicans. While making a film, he says, it’s easier for him to remain in character. “If you go to inordinate length to explore and discover and bring a world to life, it makes better sense to stay in that world rather than jump in and out of it, which I find exhausting and difficult. That way there isn’t the sense of rupture every time the camera stops.” Pretending to be someone else is “absurd,” he says, and he will only yield to that experience if the character grips him; he’s only made four films in a decade, rejecting dozens of scripts. When he does choose to be transformed, he holds nothing back. “I think it is about losing yourself in time. I suppose it’s like when painters begin to make marks on a canvas and then 24 hours later they’re still working and there’s no sense of the ticking clock and no sense of the self. The self takes care of itself through the work. And I find that intoxicating.”
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
-
The best war movies of the 21st centuryWar is hell. For most people, these eight extraordinary films will be as close as they ever get to it.
-
6 fantastic homes with fun rooms for kidsFeature Featuring an organic modern house in Austin and historic Chicago abode
-
Democrats seek calm and counterprogramming ahead of SOTUIN THE SPOTLIGHT How does the party out of power plan to mark the president’s first State of the Union speech of his second term? It’s still figuring that out.
