Daniel Day-Lewis: In the blood
Tuesday, 05 Feb 2008 17:48
Daniel Day-Lewis is expected to claim the best actor Oscar.
The Golden Globe winner and Oscar nominee talks to inthenews.co.uk's Lewis Bazley about family, fame and oil.
For some actors, researching a part goes as far as spending a few hours in the boxing ring, brushing up on their Boston accent or becoming a dab hand with a knife.
But for Daniel Day-Lewis, Strasbergian method goes to a completely new level, not just leading to a perception of the actor as an almost-frighteningly intense co-star but involving such absorption in a part that his onscreen appearances seem fully realised, entirely human creations, rather than artificial constructs.
No more obvious is this than in Paul Thomas Anderson's masterly There Will Be Blood, with Day-Lewis' performance as amoral oil prospector Daniel Plainview already honoured with a Golden Globe and a near certainty to receive a best actor nod from the Academy once the red carpet is rolled out at the Kodak Theatre.
Alongside the grandstanding Day-Lewis, the sterling contributions of Ciaran Hinds and Paul Dano - playing two roles after the actor originally cast as small town preacher Eli Sunday left the project - are inevitably overshadowed.
But in his first movie role, young Texan Dillon Freasier brings immense heart and complexity to his performance as Plainview's son HW, a pawn in his father's unswerving path towards power and damnation.
inthenews.co.uk's Lewis Bazley talked to Daniel Day-Lewis about the pressures of translating his own experiences of fatherhood and responsibility to his screen partnership with Freasier.
Though Day-Lewis' relationship with his author father Cecil was always thought to be a troubling aspect of the actor's psyche, he explains: "My relationship with my own father was much less complex than you might have been led to believe. He was just a man I never really got to know, there's nothing really complex about that.
"In later years, reassessing what might have been a relationship, that's where the complexity is I suppose, because we all measure ourselves, if we're men, against our fathers."
Married to director Rebecca Miller since 1996, Day-Lewis resides in County Wicklow with the couple's children Ronan and Cashel and is also a father to 12-year-old Gabriel, after his six-year relationship with actress Isabelle Adjani.
While he's admitted an adoration for his quiet family life in Ireland, he told inthenews.co.uk: "I would hope that none of my experiences as a father would have fed my relationship as Plainview to HW!
"In fact, it probably worked against me a little bit," he continued, "because I felt so protective of that wonderful young man [Freasier] to the point where he'd almost be swatting me off like a mosquito!"
With ten-year-old Freasier, a "genuine cowboy", making his film debut in There Will Be Blood, Day-Lewis admitted to being "really worried for him".
"We were friends before we started shooting and at a given moment, I really felt I needed to explain to him the deal," he continued.
"I said 'Look, in a few days, we're going to be in this story and I'm going to be speaking to you harshly… ' and he looked at me like I was insane!
"Like 'what the f**k are you telling me that for?!?' I blurted 'You know I love you' and he said 'I know that, leave me alone!' and he got on with it."
To read the rest of the inthenews.co.uk with Oscar nominee Daniel Day-Lewis, click here
Lewis Bazley
To watch the There Will Be Blood trailer on inthenews.co.uk, click here
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