Daniel Day-Lewis Biography

Actor

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Daniel Day-Lewis is a leading man of stage and screen, known for his two Academy Awards and for his intensity in movies such as My Beautiful Laundrette (1985), The Last of the Mohicans (1992) and The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988). After a successful career on the British stage, he appeared in supporting roles in Gandhi (1982, starring Ben Kingsley) and The Bounty (1984, with Anthony Hopkins) before moving into leading roles. Known for his commitment to the craft of acting, Day-Lewis has played refined gentlemen as well as rough-and-tumble bruisers in movies such as A Room With A View (1985), The Age of Innocence (1993) and In the Name of the Father (1993). He won an Oscar for his performance in My Left Foot (1989) and was nominated for another for In the Name of the Father, but took time off from the movies to perform on stage. After another critically-praised performance in The Boxer (1997), he again took a break from the movies; there were unconfirmed reports that he had worked as a cobbler in Italy before Martin Scorsese talked him into appearing as Bill "The Butcher" Cutting in Gangs of New York (2002, with Leonardo DiCaprio). Continuing to make himself scarce, he appeared next in The Ballad of Jack and Rose (2005, written and directed by his wife, Rebecca Miller) and There Will Be Blood (2007, with Paul Dano), for which he again won the Oscar as best actor.

Extra credit: His dad was English Poet Laureate Cecil Day-Lewis, and his grandfather was Sir Michael Balcon, a film producer and former head of Ealing Studios... His father-in-law was American playwright Arthur Miller.

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