Daniel Day Lewis

Daniel Day Lewis has not been himself lately. Which is mostly a good thing, since Lewis earns his keep portraying other people, inhabiting other lives. But during the last year, things have gotten out of hand for the acclaimed 30-year-old English actor. First, there were six months in Paris, toiling on the profoundly difficult film version of Czech novelist Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Lewis, a rail-thin, rangy fellow, portrays Tomaz, a neurosurgeon and "epic" womanizer whose life is torn asunder by the political strife of 1968 Prague, and by the metaphysical strife caused by one of the women he takes up with.

In the prologue to "Nine," a director talks about how fragile movies are, always one tiny mistake away from failure. Surely that goes double for movies like "Nine," adapted from a stage musical, one of the toughest art forms to adapt to the screen, a medium that so often fails to capture the magic of live performance. It can be done, though - Rob Marshall had a pop success and won an Oscar for his adaptation of "Chicago," and he gives his all to "Nine," signing up an impressive roster of stars and singers, staging some gargantuan and fancy production numbers.

Another celeb snuck off and got married last week without bothering to alert the media. This time, it was actor Daniel Day-Lewis, who discreetly wed Rebecca Miller in a private ceremony Wednesday. Rebecca who? Well, Day-Lewis, who has dated stars from Julia Roberts to Sinead O'Connor, has settled on a slightly lower-profile lady for his bride. Miller, 32, is also an actress, but at the moment is better known as the daughter of famed playwright Arthur Miller. Day-Lewis, 39, has starred in such films as "In the Name of the Father," "My Left Foot" and, most hunkily, "The Last of the Mohicans.

Oscar-winning actor Daniel Day-Lewis, the son of a writer, has a kindred spirit in new wife Rebecca Miller, the daughter of playwright Arthur Miller. They were married Wednesday in a private ceremony, syndicated columnist Liz Smith reported yesterday. The couple met while Day-Lewis, 39, was making the film version of Arthur Miller's play The Crucible. The movie, which also stars Winona Ryder, opens Wednesday. Rebecca Miller, 32, is an aspiring actress and director. Day-Lewis won an Oscar for his role in My Left Foot.

He sat for hours at a time, taut and silent, in a wheelchair. To make his limbs useless, he twisted his body into a heap. And to be completely beholden to others, he muffled his voice to low, guttural tones. Completely incapacitated, Daniel Day-Lewis sat amid the cold metal of the wheelchair each day for six weeks, diligently working to lose himself in the life of an extraordinary man. Day-Lewis fulfills that goal with his powerful performance in "My Left Foot," which opened last week.

Brooding. Intense. Secretive. Chameleonlike. Crazy. All of these words have been used to describe actor Daniel Day-Lewis, who, for each role, seems to throw himself into the abyss and emerge whole, a completely new character. "There is a nakedness about (his) performance that goes well beyond mere virtuosity," said one writer, describing Day-Lewis' Oscar-winning portrayal of Christy Brown, a severely disabled Irish author and artist, in My Left Foot (1989). As opaque and unknowable as he appears off screen - this pale stalk of a man, dressed in black, who stares into some distant place when asked a question - on screen, he holds nothing back.

Daniel Day-Lewis has a speech near the end of There Will Be Blood that is mostly about oil drainage, about the clandestine siphoning of someone else's cache of crude. As Daniel Plainview, a once lowly prospector-turned-petro titan ensconced in his California manse, he illustrates that process by supposing that he and another guy are drinking milkshakes, but that Plainview is drinking his from an especially long straw. He could reach over to the other person's milkshake with that straw, you see, and start drinking from it, too. "I drink your milkshake!"

Just remember this: A kiss is not just a kiss. Sometimes it's work. Or worse. What's it like to do a love scene? Don't ask Debra Winger, who says being in a clinch with Richard Gere for An Officer and a Gentleman made her want to cry. (Pass the Kleenex.) There was no love lost between Kim Basinger and Mickey Rourke while making 9 1/2 Weeks. And Madeleine Stowe went cold when Daniel Day-Lewis eyed her in The Last of the Mohicans. "We were standing under a waterfall in 30-degree temperatures," Stowe says.

Every so often, like shooting stars, a few Oscars tumble from the firmament of Hollywood's glib production values and huge salaries onto small pictures and their unpretentious casts. Last night, such awards fell to Daniel Day-Lewis and Brenda Fricker for their exquisite performances in the Irish import "My Left Foot," and the two lit up the sky briefly with their open surprise at being chosen best actor and best supporting actress. Those categories usually belong to America's rhinestone royalty, those insta-faces who show up on "Entertainment Tonight" and in the supermarket tabloids, whose bodies are draped in finely cut evening clothes from only the best designers.

In the prologue to "Nine," a director talks about how fragile movies are, always one tiny mistake away from failure. Surely that goes double for movies like "Nine," adapted from a stage musical, one of the toughest art forms to adapt to the screen, a medium that so often fails to capture the magic of live performance. It can be done, though - Rob Marshall had a pop success and won an Oscar for his adaptation of "Chicago," and he gives his all to "Nine," signing up an impressive roster of stars and singers, staging some gargantuan and fancy production numbers.

Daniel Day-Lewis has a speech near the end of There Will Be Blood that is mostly about oil drainage, about the clandestine siphoning of someone else's cache of crude. As Daniel Plainview, a once lowly prospector-turned-petro titan ensconced in his California manse, he illustrates that process by supposing that he and another guy are drinking milkshakes, but that Plainview is drinking his from an especially long straw. He could reach over to the other person's milkshake with that straw, you see, and start drinking from it, too. "I drink your milkshake!"

You have to crawl before you can walk, the saying goes. But when writer/director Jim Sheridan began his collaboration with actor Daniel Day Lewis on My Left Foot, it was a case of crawling before both could soar. Through their subsequent collaborations on In the Name of the Father and, now The Boxer, which opens Friday, Sheridan and Day Lewis are one of those legendary screen partnerships, ranking with John Ford and John Wayne, Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro. "Pretty august company," demurs Sheridan by phone, too modest to take the compliment.

Another celeb snuck off and got married last week without bothering to alert the media. This time, it was actor Daniel Day-Lewis, who discreetly wed Rebecca Miller in a private ceremony Wednesday. Rebecca who? Well, Day-Lewis, who has dated stars from Julia Roberts to Sinead O'Connor, has settled on a slightly lower-profile lady for his bride. Miller, 32, is also an actress, but at the moment is better known as the daughter of famed playwright Arthur Miller. Day-Lewis, 39, has starred in such films as "In the Name of the Father," "My Left Foot" and, most hunkily, "The Last of the Mohicans.

Oscar-winning actor Daniel Day-Lewis, the son of a writer, has a kindred spirit in new wife Rebecca Miller, the daughter of playwright Arthur Miller. They were married Wednesday in a private ceremony, syndicated columnist Liz Smith reported yesterday. The couple met while Day-Lewis, 39, was making the film version of Arthur Miller's play The Crucible. The movie, which also stars Winona Ryder, opens Wednesday. Rebecca Miller, 32, is an aspiring actress and director. Day-Lewis won an Oscar for his role in My Left Foot.

Just remember this: A kiss is not just a kiss. Sometimes it's work. Or worse. What's it like to do a love scene? Don't ask Debra Winger, who says being in a clinch with Richard Gere for An Officer and a Gentleman made her want to cry. (Pass the Kleenex.) There was no love lost between Kim Basinger and Mickey Rourke while making 9 1/2 Weeks. And Madeleine Stowe went cold when Daniel Day-Lewis eyed her in The Last of the Mohicans. "We were standing under a waterfall in 30-degree temperatures," Stowe says.

Brooding. Intense. Secretive. Chameleonlike. Crazy. All of these words have been used to describe actor Daniel Day-Lewis, who, for each role, seems to throw himself into the abyss and emerge whole, a completely new character. "There is a nakedness about (his) performance that goes well beyond mere virtuosity," said one writer, describing Day-Lewis' Oscar-winning portrayal of Christy Brown, a severely disabled Irish author and artist, in My Left Foot (1989). As opaque and unknowable as he appears off screen - this pale stalk of a man, dressed in black, who stares into some distant place when asked a question - on screen, he holds nothing back.

When Daniel Day-Lewis stepped on stage to accept his Oscar as best actor for My Left Foot in March, most people got their first good look at the man behind the masks. Dressed in black, his hair a dark, wavy mane, Day-Lewis looked like, well, a movie star. Certainly not an upper-class prig, or a working-class punk, or a Czech brain surgeon, or any of the other far-flung characters he has played in his short, meteoric movie career. As Christy Brown, the writer and artist whose life's story, My Left Foot, is being released on video this week, Day-Lewis fashioned his best mask yet, a heartbreaking, funny and utterly unsentimental portrait of a man whose battle against cerebral palsy made him a modern folk hero in his native Ireland.

Every so often, like shooting stars, a few Oscars tumble from the firmament of Hollywood's glib production values and huge salaries onto small pictures and their unpretentious casts. Last night, such awards fell to Daniel Day-Lewis and Brenda Fricker for their exquisite performances in the Irish import "My Left Foot," and the two lit up the sky briefly with their open surprise at being chosen best actor and best supporting actress. Those categories usually belong to America's rhinestone royalty, those insta-faces who show up on "Entertainment Tonight" and in the supermarket tabloids, whose bodies are draped in finely cut evening clothes from only the best designers.