Immigration Law

IMMIGRANT OF THE DAY: DANIEL DAY-LEWIS - ACTOR

By Greg Siskind

The Oscars are being handed out next Sunday night so it's a good week to look at the contributions immigrants are making in the film industry. Each day this week, I'll be honoring a different immigrant nominated for an Academy Award.

I'll start today with the brilliant actor Daniel Day-Lewis. I remember seeing him for the first time twenty years ago in the film adaptation of a favorite book of mine, Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being. A year later he earned an Oscar for his role playing the arm-less artist Christy Brown in My Left Foot. In 1993, he was nominated again for his portrayal of Gerry Conlan in In the Name of the Father. If you've never seen that movie, I have to strongly recommend you rent it. It's got a great soundtrack as well I still listen to from time to time. Nine years later, he received his third nomination playing the very scary Bill Cutting in The Gangs of New York. And this year he is up for nomination number four for the role of Daniel Plainview in There Will be Blood.

One interesting tidbit I found in my research on Day-Lewis. He's married to Rebecca Miller, the American film director and daughter of the late playwright Arthur Miller, one of the 20th century's most gifted writers. Miller wrote Death of a Salesman as well as The Crucible. Day-Lewis acted in the 1996 film version of The Crucible and was there that he met Arthur Miller and his daughter.

Full post as published by Greg Siskind's Blog on February 18, 2008 (boomark / email).