Daniel Day-Lewis

"...it was the Oscar-winning turn as Christy Brown in My Left Foot (1989) that won him a reputation as one of the world's foremost practitioners of the method school of acting. Throughout production, the actor remained in character as the writer with cerebral palsy, never leaving his wheelchair and being spoon-fed by the crew...This preparation, for which Day-Lewis is now notorious, has been the cause of much heated discussion - and of some public concern. He crudely tattooed his hands and trained has a real fighter, twice a day, seven days a week, for nearly three years, for The Boxer (1997). His trainer - the former world champion Barry McGuigan, no less - remarked that he could have turned professional. For In the Name of the Father (1993), he slept in an abandoned jail and ate only prision rations. For The Crucible (1996), he lived in the film set's replica village without electricity or running water and built his character's house with 17th-century tools. But it was his method work as Bill the Butcher in Scorcese's Gangs of New York (2002) that attracted most attention. He trained as a butcher, caught pneumonia while on set (having refused to change his thread-bare coat for a warmer one because it hadn't existed in the 19th century), and wandered about Rome (where Gangs was filmed) in character, fighting strangers. "I had to do my preparation', he says with a grin. 'And I will admit I went mad, totally mad".

The Independent Arts&Books Review, Friday 1, February 2008.