Best actor ever? That’s daft, says Day-Lewis

Daniel Day-Lewis said it is “daft” to refer to him as the best actor to have ever lived, despite his latest triumph making him the first man to win three best actor Oscars.

His Oscar glory put him ahead of Hollywood legends including Jack Nicholson, Marlon Brando, and Dustin Hoffman.

But the 55-year-old Lincoln star was bemused when asked if he was now “the world’s greatest actor”.

“It’s daft isn’t it? “Sean [Penn] had to go through all this a few years ago. It changes all the time.”

He said he had no immediate plans to make more movies, adding: “I don’t know where I’m going ... [I want to] re-engage with life.”

He said of future movie roles: “I can’t think of anyone right now because I need to lie down for a couple of years. It’s really hard to imagine doing anything after this.”

The method actor joked: “I’m definitely out of character at this moment. If I slip back into it by mistake, you can do an intervention of some kind, the Heimlich manoeuvre or whatever it is you do for actors stuck in character.”

Day-Lewis’s Oscar nod was the star’s fifth in the category, which he won previously in 1989 for My Left Foot and in 2007 for There Will Be Blood.

Accepting his award from Meryl Streep, he said: “I really don’t know how any of this happened.” He also paid tribute to his wife, before tearfully thanking his mother.

Day-Lewis, the son of former poet laureate Cecil Day-Lewis and actress Jill Balcon, has a reputation for taking method acting very seriously.

He is said to have lived in a tent on a deserted Texan oil field during the making of There Will Be Blood.

In order to play Guildford Four member Gerry Conlon in In the Name of the Father, he spent two days in a prison cell without food and water. While shooting The Ballad of Jack and Rose, he chose to live apart from his wife Rebecca Miller and their two children — because she was the director and he was playing a conflicted family man.

And he chose to stay in character as fearsome Bill “The Butcher” Cutting, even when the cameras stopped rolling on the Martin Scorsese epic Gangs of New York.

“He’d be sharpening his knives at lunchtime just like you’d expect Bill the Butcher to do. He’s just really intense,” recalled co-star Leonardo DiCaprio.

Away from Hollywood, stories of his eccentricities abound. In 1997, he turned his back on film and became a shoemaker in Florence, where he remained until Scorsese lured him back.

He grew up in south London and has dual British and Irish citizenship. Fiercely private, he lives in Co Wicklow with Miller — daughter of playwright Arthur Miller — and their sons.

He is often spoken of as a recluse, but has told an interviewer he needs peace and quiet in order to prepare for acting jobs.

“I couldn’t work or get ready for a piece of work from a city base, from city life. I need deep, deep quiet and a landscape too that I can be absorbed into. So much of the work is in the process of aimless rumination in which things may or may not take seed,” he explained.

* Following Day-Lewis’s Oscar win, the Wicklow Hospice Foundation has launched a global online auction of Lincoln memorabilia.

Director Steven Spielberg donated props from the film for an auction last month, which generated over €100,000. Now, items which were held back, are to be sold and can be viewed at www.ashgrovegroup.ie.

The bidding is open until Mar 1.