Daniel Day Lewis,Montecito Award, SBIFF 2013

Reviewed by Lynn Montgomery, Arlington Theatre, SBIFF 2013

Daniel Day Lewis broke his nose in The Boxer. For The Crucible he etched actual tattoos on his body. For Gangs of New York he became a butcher’s apprentice and sharpened his knives between takes. For My Left Foot he refused to leave his wheelchair and made the crew wheel him around and feed him. And for Lincoln, there is the ultimate make or break commitment to the craft. Steven Spielberg asked Daniel Day Lewis to star as America’s iconic statesman, Abraham Lincoln, and Day-Lewis refused. He didn’t think he had the gravitas to pull it off. A few years went by before Day-Lewis relented. The movie was made. The rest is cinematic history.

We sat in the second row, less than five feet from Daniel Day Lewis on the night he received The Montecito Award. That definitely was an advantage. Day-Lewis speaks in a whisper. You lean in to hear him. Of course, I could have heard him over the PA system and watched the theatre screen on the stage, but it felt like a private conversation in my living room and I didn’t want to miss a word.

Daniel Day Lewis is not arrogant about his success. He knows it is the result of a lot of hard work, talent – yes and also luck. He tells the story of how My Beautiful Launderette and A Room With a View premiered in the United States at exactly the same time. Audiences and critics alike were stunned. Who is this guy who can go from a foppish Victorian suitor to a working class punk?  He says it was just luck of timing that these films came out simultaneously. They were not made at the same time. They did not come out in Europe at the same time. But the fact that he had that kind of exposure and virtuoso platform at that stage in his career – well it made his career. It was 1986 and he won the New York Film Critic’s Circle Award as best supporting actor. Many more awards followed, including two academy awards. One for portraying writer and artist, Christy Brown in My Left Foot, and the second award for his horrifying depiction of Daniel Plainview in There Will Be Blood.

I will always go to a Daniel Day Lewis. I know the character will be authentic. I know the story will impact my life in some way. Seeing clips from his films, I was surprised to see that there were several Day-Lewis films I had not seen. This is the wonderful thing about tributes at the SBIFF. I now have a list of at least 4 movies at the top of my Netflix queue: The Bounty; Nine; In The Name of The Father; and The Ballad of Jack and Rose. The latter was written by his wife, Rebecca Miller, the daughter of Arthur Miller.

And there is something else wonderful about seeing one of your favorite actors in such an intimate setting with 2,000 of your new best friends – he is comfortable enough that when the moment comes, midway through the program, he can just get up and say, “I have to go pee.”  Then he excuses himself and walks off stage. When he returned he picked right back up where he left off – intimately revealing all his and our deep secrets.