INTERMISSION

A WRITER TAKES PAUSE TO CONSIDER…

ANN LEE @_ANN_LEE

Whenever anyone asks who my favourite actor is, I don’t need any time to deliberate. It’s Daniel Day-Lewis each and every time. My answer has never wavered since I watched In the Name of the Father as a teenager. The actor’s thundering performance as Gerry Conlon, an Irishman who spent 15 years in prison after being wrongly convicted as an IRA bomber, floored me. It was so raw and affecting; he turned himself inside out with rage and grief as someone railing against injustice.

Ever since then, I’ve been hooked on watching him unravel like some magnificent tornado blowing through my screen, leaving a beautiful wreckage in his wake. And while he’s won three Oscars for his performances in My Left Foot, There Will Be Blood and Lincoln, the films of his that I’ve returned to again and again have been The Last of the Mohicans (that speech under the waterfall!), My Beautiful Laundrette (only he could be so effortlessly charming as a hooligan with a right-wing past) and The Age of Innocence (no sex scene can compete with the sight of Day-Lewis gently unbuttoning Michelle Pfeiffer’s glove and kissing her bare wrist). Each time, he’s barely recognisable, completely transformed.

I’ve followed his career closely and read biographies about his life, intrigued by tales of the extreme lengths he would go to immerse himself in his roles. Day-Lewis, of course, is famous for being a meticulous Method actor who spends months in character in his tireless dedication to his craft, not even breaking when he’s off set. He births a part with the blood, sweat and tears that usually accompany real labour, giving life to something that transcends mere performance.

This is the man who spent three days in solitary confinement without any water to prepare for In the Name of the Father; who lived in the woods of North Carolina for a month for The Last of the Mohicans; who trained as a butcher for Gangs of New York; who learned Czech for The Unbearable Lightness of Being even though the script was in English; and who fled the stage after seeing his father’s ghost while performing Hamlet (a claim he later denied). This is an actor who wants to live and breathe each role.

‘No sex scene can compete with the sight of Day-Lewis gently unbuttoning Michelle Pfeiffer’s glove’

All of this behaviour is a million miles away from the humdrum life of a journalist (unless eating endless biscuits counts as going Method). But to someone like me, who is so sensible and rational, my head often overruling my heart, I’m fascinated by anyone who is able to so wholeheartedly and completely embrace their instincts and lean into them rather than analysing them to death, like I usually do.

So, he’s not just my favourite actor – I find his approach to his work constantly inspiring, too. Day-Lewis knows exactly what he wants and follows his passions wherever they might take him. His filmography is relatively slim as he’s extremely selective about what parts he takes on, only choosing projects that resonate deeply with him. What other actor would have taken a sabbatical from acting to learn how to make shoes in Florence, Italy, as if Hollywood was just another banal office job you need to escape from? He’s looking for authenticity, not just in his roles, but also in his own life.

And what other film star would have quit at the very height of his success, aged 60, in 2017, just a few years after his Oscar win for Lincoln and before his sixth Academy Award nomination for Paul Thomas Anderson’s Phantom Thread? It takes guts to know when to bow out gracefully, to be keenly aware of your own limits, even as everyone else around you is clamouring for more.

Sometimes, when I’m faced with a dilemma, I like to think to myself: what would Daniel Day-Lewis do? Do I always follow the path I imagine he would take? Of course not, especially as I’m pretty sure nine times out of 10, he would probably just take himself off to some cave in the wilderness and whittle a canoe out of a tree trunk or similar. I’m not an extremely wealthy actor who has piles of money to do whatever I want. I’m a normal person with bills to pay. I can’t always make the same kind of sacrifices when it comes to my own craft, writing, but that question is a gentle nudge that I need to get out of my head and listen more closely to my gut.

It’s a reminder that maybe I need to drown out the noise and follow my heart with the same fearlessness Day-Lewis is capable of, no matter how scary that is. And while I won’t get an Oscar for my efforts, maybe I’ll end up with something better – knowing that I’m being true to myself.