Age: 69
male
Sir Daniel Michael Blake Day-Lewis (born 29 April 1957) is an English and Irish actor. Often described as one of the greatest actors in the history of cinema, he is best known for intense method acting portrayed with eccentric characters in auteur films. He is the recipient of numerous accolades including a record three Academy Awards for Best Actor as well as four BAFTAs, three Screen Actors Guild Awards and two Golden Globes. In 2014, Day-Lewis received a knighthood for services to drama. Born and raised in London, Day-Lewis excelled on stage at the National Youth Theatre before being accepted at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, which he attended for three years. Despite his traditional training he is considered a method actor, known for his constant devotion to and research of his roles. Protective of his private life, he rarely grants interviews and makes very few public appearances. Day-Lewis shifted between theatre and film for most of the early 1980s, joining the Royal Shakespeare Company and playing Romeo Montague in Romeo and Juliet and Flute in A Midsummer Night's Dream. Playing the title role in Hamlet at the National Theatre in London in 1989, he left the stage midway through a performance after breaking down during a scene where the ghost of Hamlet's father appears before him—this was his last appearance on the stage. After supporting film roles in Gandhi (1982) and The Bounty (1984), he earned acclaim for his breakthrough performances in My Beautiful Laundrette (1985), A Room with a View (1985), and The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988). He earned three Academy Awards for Best Actor for his roles as Christy Brown in My Left Foot (1989), oil tycoon Daniel Plainview in There Will Be Blood (2007), and Abraham Lincoln in Lincoln (2012). He was Oscar-nominated for In the Name of the Father (1993), Gangs of New York (2002), and Phantom Thread (2017). Other notable films include The Last of the Mohicans (1992), The Age of Innocence (1993), The Crucible (1996), and The Boxer (1997). He retired from acting twice, from 1997 to 2000 when he took up a new profession as an apprentice shoe-maker in Italy, and from 2017 to 2024. In 2025, he starred in and co-wrote Anemone, directed by his son Ronan. Description above from the Wikipedia article Daniel Day-Lewis, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
Daniel Day-Lewis
Merlin
for Merlin in King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table
Suggested by nathanbates
King Arthur was a legendary British leader who, according to medieval histories and romances, led the defence of Britain against Saxon invaders in the late 5th and early 6th centuries. The details of Arthur's story are mainly composed of folklore and literary invention, and modern historians generally agree that he is unhistorical. The sparse historical background of Arthur is gleaned from various sources, including the Annales Cambriae, the Historia Brittonum, and the writings of Gildas. Arthur's name also occurs in early poetic sources such as Y Gododdin. Arthur is a central figure in the legends making up the Matter of Britain. The legendary Arthur developed as a figure of international interest largely through the popularity of Geoffrey of Monmouth's fanciful and imaginative 12th-century Historia Regum Britanniae (History of the Kings of Britain). In some Welsh and Breton tales and poems that date from before this work, Arthur appears either as a great warrior defending Britain from human and supernatural enemies or as a magical figure of folklore, sometimes associated with the Welsh otherworld Annwn.[6] How much of Geoffrey's Historia (completed in 1138) was adapted from such earlier sources, rather than invented by Geoffrey himself, is unknown.
