A Method actor without parallel, Day-Lewis soon came to the understanding that he was far better suited to film than theatre. He adapted Stanislavsky's method theories rigorously to the long shooting schedules, and when he worked on Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness Of Being, he learnt Czech and staunchly refused to break character for the entire 8-month shooting schedule.
And that, incredible as it sounds, was just the beginning. Two years later in 1989, he acted in a career-defining performance in Jim Sheridan's My Left Foot. He was immediately drawn to the severely paralzyed protagonist Christy Brown -- the opening scene of the script described Christy as putting a record on the turntable with his foot, the record skipping and the foot picking up the needle and replacing it. 'I knew it couldn't be done,' Day-Lewis told The New York Times, 'and that intrigued me.'
That intrigue was enough for the actor to self-confine himself to a wheelchair for so many successive months that he broke two ribs. He had to be wheeled around on set, and asked for the crew to curse him so he could gain an accurate estimate of Christy's humiliations. The performance won him a richly deserved Best Actor Oscar.
Also read: Nominee Spotlight: George Clooney
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