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.
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.
That pipe ended up in some thugs colon more than once.
