Daniel Day-Lewis Age, Height, Wife, Net Worth & Biography

Daniel Day-Lewis is a British-Irish actor widely regarded as one of the greatest film actors of his generation. Born on April 29, 1957, in London, England, Day-Lewis, 69, is the only actor to have won three Academy Awards for Best Actor, for My Left Foot, There Will Be Blood and Lincoln, and he is known for the intensity and total immersion of his method acting.

Quick Facts

Who Is Daniel Day-Lewis?

Daniel Day-Lewis is an actor whose name has become shorthand for complete commitment to a role. He chooses his films rarely, often spending years between projects, and when he does appear, he disappears into the character so fully that it can be hard to see the actor behind it. He won his first Academy Award for My Left Foot (1989), in which he played Christy Brown, the Irish writer and painter who, born with cerebral palsy, learned to write and paint with his left foot. He won his second for There Will Be Blood (2007), as the oilman Daniel Plainview, a performance of terrifying ambition and loneliness, and his third for Lincoln (2012), in which he played the American president Abraham Lincoln with a quiet, weary authority that surprised audiences who expected a more theatrical portrayal.

Day-Lewis is known for method acting taken to extremes: he has learned to make shoes, to box, to speak in an accent for months, and to stay in character between takes. He has often said that he does not see this as a technique to show off, but as a way of finding the truth of a character and of the world that character lives in. That approach has produced a small but extraordinary filmography, in which almost every film, from A Room with a View to Phantom Thread, is remembered for his performance. He announced his retirement from acting in 2017, after Phantom Thread, and then returned to the screen in 2025 in Anemone, a film directed by his son Ronan Day-Lewis, a reminder that his retirement was a pause rather than a final goodbye.

Early Life & Background

Daniel Day-Lewis was born in Kensington, London, the second child of the poet Cecil Day-Lewis, who later became Poet Laureate, and the actress Jill Balcon. His older sister, Tamasin, became a television chef and food writer. Growing up in Greenwich, south-east London, he attended the independent school Bedales in Hampshire, where he was known as a rebellious and creative pupil, and he first became interested in acting as a teenager. He trained at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, where he learned the discipline of classical theatre, and he worked on stage with the Bristol Old Vic and, later, with the Royal Shakespeare Company.

His early film roles were small but promising, including a part in Gandhi (1982) and a breakthrough as the gay punk Johnny in Stephen Frears’s My Beautiful Laundrette (1985), a film that brought him to wide attention in Britain. In the same year he played the very different, upper-class Cecil Vyse in A Room with a View, showing a range that would become his trademark. He then worked in The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988) and in My Left Foot, a film that required him to play a man with severe cerebral palsy, and for which he spent time with people with the condition and learned to use a wheelchair and to write with his left foot. The Oscar that followed made him, at 32, one of the most respected young actors in the world.

Career

After My Left Foot, Day-Lewis chose roles that tested him in different ways. He played the frontiersman Hawkeye in Michael Mann’s The Last of the Mohicans (1992), learning to live in the wilderness and to use a long rifle, and he played the lawyer in In the Name of the Father (1993), which brought him a second Oscar nomination. He played Bill the Butcher in Martin Scorsese’s Gangs of New York (2002), a performance that earned him another nomination and showed his ability to play a villain with charm and menace, and he played the poet and writer in The Boxer (1997), for which he trained as a boxer for months.

There Will Be Blood is often cited as his greatest performance. As Daniel Plainview, an oil prospector who becomes rich and then isolated by his own ambition, Day-Lewis used a voice based on the American director John Huston and a physical style that made Plainview seem both powerful and broken. The film won him his second Oscar. Lincoln brought him a third, a record for a male actor, and Phantom Thread (2017), directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, in which he played the fashion designer Reynolds Woodcock, brought him a sixth nomination. He has also worked as a cobbler in Italy, a period in which he stepped away from acting to learn a craft, a decision that says much about his belief that acting should be grounded in real, physical work. His return in Anemone (2025), co-written with his son Ronan, was received as a major event in film, and it showed that his power on screen had not diminished.

Facts About Daniel Day-Lewis

• He is the only actor to have won three Academy Awards for Best Actor.
• He won Oscars for My Left Foot, There Will Be Blood and Lincoln.
• He trained at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School and worked with the Royal Shakespeare Company.
• He married writer and director Rebecca Miller in 1996, and they have two sons, Ronan and Cashel.
• He returned to acting in 2025 in Anemone, directed by his son Ronan Day-Lewis, after announcing his retirement in 2017.

Frequently Asked Questions

More Trending Profiles

Discover more profiles on The Celeb IO: Morgan Freeman Age & Biography, Denzel Washington Age & Biography, Tom Hanks Age & Biography and Tom Cruise Age & Biography.