Interesting comments on British cinema from an interview in London Time Out magazine. (Jan 2008)
Daniel Day-Lewis Talks to Time Out London
Despite the time he’s spent in America, Day-Lewis can’t resist a grumble at a recent New York Times interview that suggested he somehow set out to become an American actor, a Brando or a De Niro, making great American movies. ‘It would have been a ludicrous ambition anyhow, but it certainly wasn’t my ambition,’ he makes clear. ‘It never occurred to me. I did feel it was misleading.’
Far from rejecting his literary and theatrical heritage, Day-Lewis says he would be very keen to work in Britain again. ‘I love American cinema and was very influenced by it, especially by the early films of Scorsese and seeing “From Here to Eternity”, “A Place in the Sun”, “On the Waterfront” for the first time,’ he acknowledges. ‘But I was also very influenced by Ken Loach’s work from the moment I saw “Kes” when I was a kid. It still remains for me one of the most powerful pieces of work ever. Before that, there was “Saturday Night and Sunday Morning”, “This Sporting Life” and “The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner”, which all supposedly expressed a new British social realism. Undoubtedly, they opened up the possibility of examining British life in a new way. That was probably the most important film experience I had.’
Do British filmmakers ever approach him with ideas? ‘Nah,’ he says, his Irish accent at its most pronounced. ‘Maybe they think I’m beyond the pale now. I don’t know. I can’t remember when the last one was.’ He pauses to think, sounding slightly forlorn. ‘I can’t remember, no.
‘I would be very interested to do films that were closer to home, particularly having spent that time working in Ireland. It would be nice to go back and do some stories that come from my own place. But it’s also true that because of having come from a middle-class literary household [his father, Cecil Day-Lewis, was Poet Laureate; his mother is the actress Jill Balcon], I’d be less interested in examining that aspect of English life than another. But that would be the most obvious kind of work to come my way, probably.’
I'd like to see him team up with Loach, or Frears again! Or one of the young directors like Meadows or Winterbottom.
22-01-2008, 11:27 AM
Daniel Day Lewis on Britain cinema (Time Out interview)
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