I recently bought the DVD for gangs of New York, and in one of the ‘making-of’ segments, it is mentioned that Lewis came out of semi-retirement from acting to take the role of Bill the Butcher.
He had been working as a cobbler in Venice.
I find that really cool and strange. A rich, successful movie star leaving the Hollywood cesspool to fix shoes in Italy.
Does anyone know more about it (googling results were sparse)?
Is he working on a new movie in 6 months? Starring as a cobbler, perhaps?
I ask because Daniel Day Lewis is widely known as a very, very odd man, and one of the greatest Method-Actors-Who-Take-It-Too-Far alive today. (That method being total immersion in the character and time period he’s portraying.) He spent 6 months building his house set with period tools for The Crucible. He ran off stage in New York during a production of Hamlet and refused to come back, because he saw his own father’s ghost in Act !.
Don’t get me wrong, dude’s a great actor. But seriously cukoo.
My favorite (probably apocryphal) method-meets-classical training story is of Dustin Hoffman and Laurence Olivier filming Marathon Man. Hoffman hasn’t slept for days, getting all broody and “in character,” and then starts running around the parking lot, doing lap after lap, until he’s totally winded and sweaty and gross, so he can film a scene where his character is totally winded and sweaty and gross. After the take, Olivier supposedly leaned over and said, “My dear boy…why don’t you simply try acting?”
That recalls someone’s comment (Spencer Tracy?) about Raymond Massey, who, in playing the role of Lincoln, took to wearing the costume off-stage: “Massey’s not going to be happy until he gets assassinated”.
And WhyNot, based on what little I know about this, I don’t think it was prepping for a role: it was claimed that when offered the role, Lewis was “in semi-retirement as a cobbler in Venice”.
Considering that Gangs was released in 2002, if he is still preparing, it’s gonna be one helluva performance.
That’s pretty much common knowledge, Declan. But I think the difference here is that Ford wasn’t quite as big a celebrity then as Daniel Day-Lewis is now (or within the last few years). Now, if Ford were doing it between roles now, I think it’d be bigger news.
Ford was a carpenter when he was cast in American Graffiti. If memory serves, he was doing some carpentery work at Lucas’ offices when he was asked to read for Han Solo (I think because someone else was sick, but I may be mistaken on that). IIRC, he was actually getting a little pissed that he hadn’t been asked to audition prior to that moment.
Hence the in-joke in Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade, as Indy has to choose the One True Grail from an array of flashy goblets : “That’s the kind of cup a carpenter would use.”
[nitpick]I’d just like to point out that Day-Lewis was apprenticed as a cordwainer not a cobbler. A cordwainer makes new shoes, a cobbler fixes old ones. That is all.[/nitpick]
I won’t name names, but I knew an actress in NYC who had a starring role on Broadway in a major hit play, with several world famous actors.
Hollywood was calling, Broadway begged for more.
The woman threw it all away…suddenly decided she wanted to be an opera star, then decided she wanted to do pottery and then decided…
Fast forward 30 years. Now she is doing regional theater for a pittance. Wondering why nobody will hire her.
Maybe it is fame too fast.
I consider it throwing up a free lunch.
Wait until nobody remembers Daniel Day Lewis and see how happy he is to fix the soles of your shoes. My guess is he will show up on some new version of Loveboat and be happy to get scale.
Ya think?
It’s not like he is a young pup now. He’s been around awhile. I believe that he is sincere about working with his hands, but he has probably made a few shrewd investments here and there. Also, doesn’t he come from a fairly well-known, well-off family? Shoemaking or not, odd or not, it is likely that Day-Lewis is already financially covered.
I dunno, I’d watch Day-Lewis in a used-car commercial, but somehow I don’t think this is going to happen.
While you may be correct about his financial security, you forget the fact that actors are barking mad. You have to be to be successful in a career with a 98% unemployment rate. The stage/screen is a siren, and sooner or later, he will be drawn back by her call.
That’s why your acquaintance is doing regional theater. Really, wouldn’t she make a more stable career by working at a bank or Whole Foods? The fact is, if you’re an actor, you’re an actor, and there’s nothing you can do about it. You can go into a recovery program and become a cobbler for a while, but sooner or later you’ll jones so bad that you’ll call your agent again.
WhyNot,
Who never made it past college theater, but still gets twitchy every time she sees a show.
Well, it’s DMark’s acquaintance doing regional theater, not mine, but I can understand the siren call of the state. I just don’t think it calls Day-Lewis quite as urgently. However, as I said, I would happily watch him sell used cars on local TV.
While he was playing Latka on “Taxi”, Andy Kaufman continued to work as a busboy at a local diner.
A couple of years ago I read an article where Anthony Hopkins was giving acting lessons to college students for free. The only payment he wanted was free cups of coffee.
How about this. In Gangs of New York his character had a glass eye. To demonstrate this the character taps the eye with the point of a knife. DDL practiced over and over tapping his eyeball with a knife till he could do it without blinking (I think and hope he was wearing a contact). First, ewww. Second it doesn’t matter how long I had, I could never do that.
