Not Knowing Is Most Intimate: Daniel Day-Lewis

Who are you?  A son?  A father?  A brother?  A colleague?  An artist?  A failure?  A success?  A dropout?  Perhaps you might try to offer a long story full of personal details, like when and where you were born, or maybe the details will extend generations back to your ancestors from another country and another time.  

But can one word summarize you?  What about a 500-page long biography borne from thousands of hours of research?  What about a bio-pic?  Or a portrait?

Lists, keywords, and stories.  These are the intellectual hooks which we use to understand ourselves.  They are seductive, useful, and oh-so-deceptive.  But, in the end, something's always left out.  Since his passing, Lincoln's inspired dozens of biographies.  Some of them have focused on his Gettysburg Address, others his presidency during the Civil War, while others've stretched from his birth to his tomb.  Some've been almost entirely pictures.  Others, collections of his writings and speeches with minimal commentary.  But where's the real Lincoln?  We'll never know.  Even Lincoln didn't know.  And that's life: a fractured mystery moving ever onwards in ways we can never fully know.

There's a famous exchange between a Zen monk and his teacher that captures this sense:

Dizang asked Fayan, “Where are you going from here?”
Fayan said, “I’m on pilgrimage.”
“What sort of thing is pilgrimage?”
“I don’t know.”
“Not knowing is most intimate.”
Fayan suddenly had a great awakening.*1

As with much of these koans, the context is unclear.  Pilgrimage could mean visiting sacred sites in the hopes of receiving blessings, but it could just as easily mean seeking out masters to deepen one's understanding.  Whatever the case, it's a journey about going somewhere to get something.  Fayan knows the jokes on him because, despite all of the clever calculations and lofty aspirations, he senses that he's got no clue what's going on.  His problem is is that that truth is still at a distance to him.  Instead of that truth being a lived reality, it's a comfortable, clever talking point that he can use to seem super spiritual-and-lofty.  Unfortunately, Dizang sees through his antics and nudges him closer to the ineffable.  In not knowing is most intimate, he knocks away Fayan's clever deceptions and opens him to the incandescent mystery of life.  It's terrifying in the truest sense of the word.

If I were to summarize Daniel Day-Lewis' own approach to acting, I'd say: not knowing is most intimate.  In one famous interview prior to the premier of Gangs of New York, Charlie Rose asked Lewis "What did you want to show or bring out from the character of Bill the Butcher?"  Lewis responded:

At some point, if you're lucky I suppose, as far away as possible from the moment that you first confront the camera, that that objectivity that would allow you to think of it in that way just melts.  So there was no conscious intention, I don't think, to show him as one thing or another, but I certainly, I remember, feeling as I approached him a great sense of a certain kind of relish in his company.

Lewis wasn't joking.  He spent about a year preparing for this role, including learning how to throw knives, how to be a butcher, and wearing period-piece clothing at almost all times.  He was so dedicated that he initially refused to change costume despite contracting pneumonia.  Eventually, others convinced him the better of it and he decided to make a slight break of character.

Other roles have inspired similar dedication (credits to Bharat Azad's article for this summary):

My Left Foot (1989)

To portray Christy Brown, the Irish artist who suffered from cerebral palsy and was only able to control his left foot, Daniel Day-Lewis asked to be wheeled around the set in his wheelchair, and crew members were required to spoonfeed him and lift him around. He damaged two ribs during filming from hunching in his wheelchair for weeks on end. He taught himself to paint using a knife held between his toes, and studied disabled patients at Sandymount School and Clinic in Dublin. Day-Lewis won a Best Actor Oscar.

The Last of the Mohicans (1992)

Day-Lewis played Hawkeye, a British man adopted by Mohican warriors who is forced to fight during the French and Indian War of the mid-18th century. To get into shape for this particularly physical role, Day-Lewis underwent rigorous weight training during which he added 20lb of muscle to his body. Not content with that, he also learnt to live off the land and forest, as his character would have done, by spending six months learning how to camp, fish and skin animals. By the end of his training he had built himself a canoe. He also carried a Kentucky rifl e at all times during filming and learnt how to load and fire it while running.

In the Name of the Father (1993)
Dir: Jim Sheridan

For the part of Gerry Conlon, who was wrongly convicted of the Guildford pub bombing in 1974 and jailed for 15 years, Day-Lewis lived on prison rations to lose 30 lb and spent extended periods in the jail cell on set, while crew hurled abuse and cold water at him.

The Crucible (1996)
Dir : Nicholas Hytner

For this adaptation of the classic Arthur Miller play based on the Salem witch trials of 1692, Day-Lewis went back in time. He stayed on a Massachusetts island in the film set's replica village - without electricity or running water - planted fields with 17th- century tools, and built his character's house.

The Boxer (1997)
Dir: Jim Sheridan

Day-Lewis played a former IRA member and boxer just out of prison. He traine with former world champion Barry McGuigan, who said he could have been a professional: 'He was in the gym twice a day, seven days a week for nearly three years.' Injuries included a broken nose and a herniated disc in his lower back.

The roles that followed Gangs of New York, There Will Be Blood and Lincoln, inspired similar dedication.  To summarize his acting style, he'd inhabit the role so completely that there became no level of distinction between him and his character.  He was Bill the Butcher, not Daniel Day-Lewis playing Bill the Butcher. The intensity of that distinction blazes through everyone of his scenes and is one of the reasons why he's one of the most acclaimed actors in cinema history.

But there's another aspect to this that I think is often overlooked: the curiosity, joy, and responsibility that comes with such intimacy.  I'll look at these piece by piece.

Curiosity

One of the most paradoxical aspects of Lewis' craft is that this intimacy beyond knowing doesn't lead to a stupor devoid of meaning and emotion.  Instead, it leads to a spontaneous welling-up of these things from the complete surrender to the character.  Lewis doesn't sit down and analyze his character, create a prescripted reaction, and act it out like a puppet master pulling the strings.  Instead, his voice, his mannerisms, his reactions emerge from the lived sense of the character, just as a tree grows out from its own self naturally.  When studying for the part of Lincoln, for example, the voice of Lincoln came to him after a long period of trying to embody him.  He described in an interview:

Mimicry, at least to me at any rate, is such a dull prospect.  But in this case there's a certain amount of research you can do and then for my own part, just in a general way, when I'm working I try to - its not something that I would contemplate approaching for quite a long time because a voice is such a deep personal reflection of character.  Its not just a composite grouping of sounds that you can put together - tones and sounds, so I try, as far as possible, and it may well be an illusion of some kind, but usually when I'm working, I begin to hear a voice.  It's not a supernatural thing.  I hear a voice if I'm lucky and this is a voice that's in my mind's ear and that is already a door opening.  After which, I then try to reproduce that sound.  There's absolutely no guaruntee that this is - with all of these decisions conscious or unconscious that we make we have no idea that this is the right path that we're taking.  And when I do take I take it in good faith and I believe in it.  And so if I hear a voice I tend to believe that I hear it for good reason.  And then the main work becomes in trying to discover that voice in one's own body.

In his finding of Lincoln's voice, the discovery emerges as a result of embodying the character.  And this, he says, in another interview, is one of the great joys and purposes of living: the curiousity of discovering life.  In another interview with Bharat Azad in The Guardian, he echoes its importance not as some esoteric power that allows him to be possessed by a character, but as a magnet that continues to enthrall him:

It is misleading to see my life in front of the camera and my life at home with my wife and children as two lives between which there is a schism. My life as it is away from movie set is a life where I follow my curiosity just as avidly as when I am working. It is with a very positive sense that I keep away from the work for a while. It has always seemed natural to me that that in turn should help me in the work that I do.

Returning to the koan that began this, not knowing is most intimate doesn't mean for Lewis and, I suspect, for Dizang, a glassy-eyed vacancy resigned to ignorance, but a vivid curiosity in the endless surprises that is Bill the Butcher, Gerry Conlon, and, ultimately, life itself.  

Joy

And while Lewis' intensity and seriousness can be felt from a mile away, the myth surrounding his craft has painted him, by some, into a joyless ascetic who tortures himself to perfection.  His interviews, however, offer a different picture.  When asked by Azad about his statement that he hates acting, Lewis responded:

I dare say I did when I said. Who doesn't hate the thing that they most love? Acting is an impossibly illusive trade to ply, but the prevailing sense I have when I go to work is one of joy. It is always represented as a kind of self-flagellation for me. It couldn't be further from the truth.

In many of his other interviews, as well, one of the keywords that comes up again and again is joy.  When answering a question about the mustache for Bill the Butcher during the Rose interview, Lewis responded:

It was my idea.  I think for most people the thing that gives most joy is learning about something, is satisfying a curiosity.  That's where most real pleasure comes from and the greater part of that pleasure of discovery takes place before you start to shoot the film.  During the course of it, you make some interesting discoveries in a different level.  I mean, it's a much more visceral pleasure because it's taking you moment by moment and its surprising you and you're much less in control of what's happening.  In essence, you're giving up yourself.  You're scooping yourself out of all of that stuff that you tried to gorge on beforehand.  And after the end of it, you feel, and I'm sure that Martin feels the same way, tremendously depleted.  The only analogy that I find that vaguely seemed to fit for me is the idea of leaving a field lying fallow because you can't grow anything anymore.  And I think [the reason I take long breaks between films] is as much that as anything else.

Thus, the reason he acts in the first place is the joy of discovery and the reason he takes so long between roles (an average of about five years between films) is because of joy.  The filming process depletes him so much that he needs time to recover and nourish his joy in other things before he has the passion and curiosity to take on another role.  

Responsibility

Another key idea that comes up in Lewis' interviews is responsibility.  This might seem odd for someone who admits himself that he works from a place beyond understanding, but I think it's the thing that allows him to give himself so fully to the team and the role that he's able to allow it to consume him completely.  Lewis understands that his level of craftsmanship isn't the ephemeral interests of a flaky artistic type that allows himself to be dominated by passing impulses.  Instead, his idea of artistry is one of total commitment, and all commitments require responsibility.

When Steven Spielberg, for example, offered him the role of Lincoln, Lewis was at first scared.  He said:

Certainly [Steven Spielberg] was a man that I'd like to spend time with and, in the abstract sense, I would've loved to work with him, but it seemed like such a proposterous idea to me to - an outlandish idea to take on that work, so I fled.  And over the course of time, then reading Tony's script - I immediately - When I read Tony's script it was intriguing to me.  I could see objectively, at least, that there was something to be done by somebody else probably.  I didn't honestly feel that I was capable of doing that work and finally, to cut to the chase, Steven and Tony- We had a meeting in Ireland when we had a couple of days talking about it by which time I reread the script for whatever reason - and I can't explain why - that moment at which one is drawn into the orbit irrevocably of a life, I felt the tug of that orbit.  I didn't know why.  I was quite alarmed by it.  And at the end of that meeting which was, I felt, was very fruitful and just a beautiful time spent together, Tony went away to reconsider ways of developing the script which had more-or-less been frozen in time.  I'd began to read Doris' book which was probably the springboard for all of us.  And I simply ran out of excuses.  And that was it.  It appeared inevitable to me.  I think it has in common with all the moments in my life when I've taken on any piece of work, I really have to feel in some sense that there's no choice.  Of course, there is a choice.  It's an illusion.  One of many.  But in this case, in that moment, I felt I had no choice but to try and understand this thing.  

While he doesn't explicitly mention the word responsibility, it saturates his thinking process.  Taking on a role is a duty to the character he's playing.  But more than that, the decision process is a human one.  For Lewis, when he enters into the orbit of another person's life, it commits him in some irrevocable way.  It is from that sense of commitment along with curiosity, joy, and mystery, that inspires him to spend a year going to the gym twice a day, seven days a week to prepare for his role as a boxer in The Boxer or going without food and water for two days and nights while staff hurled cold water and insults on him.  It's an honoring of another human being not from some shallow,  "I should do it because that's what good people do" kind of way, but the honoring that comes naturally when we recognize the humanity of another person.  That sense of responsibility drives him onwards to perfection.

But his level of responsibility extends to his colleagues as well.  While considering taking the role in Gangs of New York, Lewis said:

I really wanted to feel that if I went into this tunnel with Martin that I knew I could be an ally for as long as he needed me.  You have to know that in yourself.  You know everyone knows the demands that you make upon yourself and that the situation makes upon you and that others make upon each other.  You can go into something with all good intentions and good will and a certain amount of energy, but if you're not going to stay in there and see it through you're not an ally.  I don't mean it in any specific way.  [I mean an ally] just so that Martin knows that he has a core group of people around him that he can count on.

This is the level of integrity and commitment that not only allows him to inhabit these characters so fully, but also work with his teams so well.  He's not there to win awards or stand out.  He's there for the human work of the character and the human work of the team that's required to make a film come to life.  It's also why so many directors and colleagues speak so highly of him.  And, I suspect, also why he's willing to endure so much for his role, not just for the character, but for his fellow cast-members.

A Noble Man

Lewis inspires so much respect because of the nobility of spirit that shines through the screen and is testified to by his demanding, joyful, and mysterious acting process.  He testifies to truth and the richness of the koan: not knowing is most intimate.  As Lewis himself said during his Lincoln interview, "I don't like it when people give directions.  I don't think I can ever act like that.  It's too coarse.  I work better with suggestions and evocations."  I suspect Lewis would be horrified and puzzled if people read his interviews, studied his films, fashioned some intricate ideas about what it means to live or to act or to make art, and then followed these scrupulously.  That misses the point.  Lewis' craft, instead, challenges us to let go of rigid rules, definitions, prescriptions, and, instead, connect to something deeper and more mysterious in us and allow that to guide us.  This might sound like some lofty mystical woo-woo, but let the electrifying presences of Bill the Butcher or Daniel Plainview convince you otherwise.  It is as real as each and every person we meet.