10 Actors Who Went Through Hell To Win An Oscar

Another actor whose name is synonymous with the greater extremes of method acting is Daniel Day-Lewis. After rising to prominence in the early 1980s, the English actor was widely acclaimed the finest of his generation; an assessment many still stand by today, as he marks his reported retirement on Phantom Thread.

Day-Lewis demonstrated how far he would go for a role on 1989's My Left Foot, in which he portrayed Irish writer and painter Christy Brown, who suffered from cerebral palsy but learned to type and paint using his left foot.

Not only did Day-Lewis learn to utilise his own foot to similar effect (although certain feats he could only achieve with his right, meaning some shots had to be reversed), he also stayed in character as Brown for the duration of filming. This meant that crew members had to push him around the set in his wheelchair, and even spoon-feed him.

My Left Foot was the first of (to date) three Best Actor Oscars for Day-Lewis, the latter two for There Will Be Blood and Lincoln. The film also saw Brenda Fricker awarded the Best Supporting Actress Oscar.