Foreign affairs

Getting into the skin of the character is not enough for Day-Lewis he has to live them. One of the most passionate actors of our times, Day-Lewis’ roles have provided him with escape and imprisonment of their own. Madness or method that’s been the oft-repeated query. And his answer, once given, after much cajoling, in an interview on a late, late show after the release of In The Name… had explained nothing. “I have never felt able to describe it in such a way that I thought was an accurate description of the way I work. So, I thought it was pointless talking about it. People choose to speak about it on my behalf. These strange rumours go about and through Chinese whispers they become more and more flamboyant and perverse. I do nothing to stop them, perhaps I should.â€Perhaps he should, for here he is again in the glare of the media, from whom he has been in hiding since The Boxer four years ago. Once again his method, the madness therein, makes him prepare for his role in The Gangs of New York as Bill “The Butcher†Poole, a gang leader who chops up his victims.

Among the varied films that he has starred in and the myriad roles that he slipped into is that of Colin, a South African thug, in Richard Attenborough’s Gandhi, his second film. His opening line in that major movie was memorable: “Get off the pavement you bloody coon.†The scene was set in Pietermaritzburg, Southern Africa, in 1893, when Gandhi was crusading for civil rights there. At that time, coloureds weren’t allowed to walk on the pavements. Gandhi challenged this, walking along a pavement and towards Daniel and two other youths. Kingsley, as Gandhi, got the final line in the scene. As Colin was about to flex his muscles, he was distracted by the voice of his mother demanding to know why he hadn’t gone to work and what he is upto. After sheepishly explaining that “we were just cleaning up the neighbourhood,†Kingsley smiles at the deflated Daniel and says, “I think you will find there is room for us all.â€

Born to Poet-Laureate Cecil Day-Lewis and Jill Balcon (daughter of Sir Michael Balcon a pioneer in British cinema) Daniel always had a legacy to live up to a weight that he sometimes found unbearable to carry in the beginning. “By his own admission, his feelings for his father have grown rather than diminished. His father’s indelible ink underlines every aspect of his life,†writes Garry Jenkins in Daniel Day Lewis: The Fire Within, where the actor is quoted as saying, “He provided the sack of genes I did not choose, though finally of which I am immensely proud.â€

Making as much news as his roles was Daniel’s now on-now off romance of five years with French actress Isabelle Adjani (mother of Daniel’s son Gabriel). In 1996, after a brief interlude with Julia Roberts, he married Rebecca Miller, daughter of American playwright Arthur Miller, whom he met on the set of The Crucible.

The first choice to play the role of the Bard in Shakespeare in Love when it was first mooted in 1994 (five years before it did its mammoth Oscar-sweep with actress Gwyneth Paltrow leading the way) opposite Julia Roberts, the meaty star now gets ready to wield a meat clever.

As he was quoted in Entertainment Weekly, December 28, 1993, in a another attempt to explain his work, “I suppose I have a highly developed capacity for self-delusion, so it’s no problem for me to believe that I’m somebody else.â€

Nilanjana Sengupta