As an actor, Daniel Michael Blake Day-Lewis has won two Academy Awards and blown the mind of anyone who ever enjoyed a milkshake with his Kubrick-esque portrayal of Daniel Plainview in There Will Be Blood.
His was the face that launched a thousand memes.
The Badass:
We're actually not sure if he's badass or just insane. Daniel Day-Lewis never met a role that he didn't become in real life.
Boxer, butcher/street brawler, wheelchair-bound cerebral palsy sufferer, last Mohican, Puritan preacher, all of them. He became all those things. For the 1997 film The Boxer, for example, he trained with former boxing world champion Barry McGuigan, who later remarked that Day-Lewis "could have turned professional" by the time their training was over.
It's really tough to figure out at which point he is acting.
For his performance as Christy Brown in My Left Foot, Day-Lewis refused to leave his wheelchair and had to be spoon-fed by the crew. For The Last of the Mohicans, he lived off the land for six months. He slept in an abandoned jail and ate only prison food for In The Name of the Father. For The Crucible, he "lived in the film set's replica village without electricity or running water" and built his character's house using 17th-century tools.
This man has spent a lot of time pooping in the woods.
The dude actually worked in a butcher shop to prepare for the character Bill the Butcher in Gangs of New York, caught pneumonia after refusing to change out of his period clothing and spent most of his time off-camera sharpening knives, which he learned how to throw with deadly accuracy. While still in character and, from the sound of it, in costume, Daniel/Bill the Butcher reportedly traipsed about picking fights with strangers during the filming of Gangs of New York.
http://www.cracked.com/article_18905_11-celebrities-who-were-secretly-total-badasses_p2.html
He's the best.
ReplyDeleteIf an actor is going to be batshit crazy, this is the only way to do it and still be cool.
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