He told me the story on the phone and I thought, here we go, not again. ‘I knew what doing the part would entail, as I knew what I am like and Martin didn’t need to convince me. As Hawkeye in The Last of The Mohicans (1992) If you notice, I get progressively thinner throughout the film because all I did was run.’ Other roles, such as the psychopathic gang leader Bill the Butcher in Martin Scorsese’s Gangs of New York (2002) drove him to distraction. ‘I did a hell of a lot of running around for that. ’It took me about six months to get myself in shape, then it all fell off during the last few weeks of the production,’ he explained. Who could forget his rendering of Hawkeye (a white man raised by Mohican Indians) in Michael Mann’s The Last of the Mohicans? Day-Lewis has throughout his career picked roles that were not only extremely challenging but completely disparate. He made his last film, Phantom Thread, in 2017, after which he announced his retirement from acting. He is the only man ever to win three Best Actor Academy Awards ‒ an achievement all the more remarkable as he’s made just 17 films in 34 years (compare this with, say, Christopher Lee, who starred in 135 films in as many years and never won an Oscar). As Bill the Butcher in Gangs of New York (2002)ĭaniel Day-Lewis’s famously intensive modus operandi is certainly effective. Chris Sullivan met the triple Oscar-winning actor to look back at his entire cinematic career, and to try and find out why he works so damn hard on immersing himself in the difficult roles he chooses.

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