biography

  • Name: Daniel Michael Blake Day-Lewis
  • Date of birth: April 29th, 1957
  • Birthplace: London, England. He assumed Irish citizenship and moved to County Wicklow, Ireland, in 1993.
  • Family: he's the second son of Cecil Day-Lewis (Poet Laureate of England) and his second wife, actress Jill Balcon. His maternal grandfather was Sir Michael Balcon, an important figure in the history of British cinema and head of the famous Ealing Studios. His older sister, Lydia Tamasin, is a documentary film maker.
  • Daniel is married since November 13, 1996 with Rebecca Miller, daugther of playwright Arthur Miller, with whom he has two sons: Ronan Cal Day-Lewis (born 14 June 1998) and Cashel Blake Day-Lewis (born May 2002). He also has another son, Gabriel-Kane, born the 9th April 1995 after his relationship with the French actress Isabelle Adjani.

Daniel was educated at Sevenoaks School in Kent, which he despised, and the more progressive Bedales in Petersfield, which he adored. He studied acting at the Bristol Old Vic School. His film debut was with Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971), but he wouldn't appear on a film again until 1982 when he landed his first adult role, a bit part in Gandhi. Between both films, he acted on stage with the Bristol Old Vic and Royal Shakespeare Companies.

After Gandhi, he appeared on British TV and did some notable theatrical performances like Another, Country (1982-1983), Dracula (1984) or Futurists (1986). His first supporting role with kind of relevance was in The Bounty (1984), and after that he appeared on My Beautiful Laundrette (1985) and A room with a view (1986), films that established him as a major talent.

Maybe the best moment of Daniel's career was in 1989, when he won numerous awards thanks to My left foot (Jim Sheridan, 1989), including the Academy Award for best actor. A short time after he returned to stage for the role of Hamlet, but he was forced to leave the production close to the end if its run and he's not been on stage again since. He wouldn't return to film as well until 1992, when he played the role of Hawkeye in The Last of the Mohicans. Some time later, he teamed again with Jim Sheridan to star In the name of the Father (1993), a critically acclaimed performance that earned him another Academy Award nomination.

After The Age of Innocence (1993), The Crucible (1996) and The Boxer (1997), Daniel took a hiatus from film until 2002, when he played William 'Bill the Butcher' Cutting in Gangs of New York, by Martin Scorsese, a role that earned him his third Academy Award Nomination.

After Gangs of New York, Rebecca Miller offered him the lead role, Jack Slavin, in her film The Ballad of Jack and Rose, in which he played a dying man with regrets over how his life had evolved and over how he had raised his teenage daughter. The film received mixed reviews, while he received almost universal praise for his performance.

In 2007, Daniel appeared in director Paul Thomas Anderson's loose adaptation of the Upton Sinclair novel Oil!, titled There Will Be Blood. Daniel received the BAFTA, Screen Actors Guild Award (which he dedicated to the late Heath Ledger), Critic's Choice Award, Golden Globe, and Academy Award for Best Actor (2008) for his performance in the film.