3. The Last of the Mohicans
1992s
The Last of the Mohicans saw Day-Lewis do the complete opposite from
My Left Foot, insofar as a physical performance was concerned. While Brown required Day-Lewis to affect extreme physical frailty, the role of Hawkeye needed him gain to gain a large amount of muscle mass. So far, so unremarkable plenty of actors beef up for a role, and since the boom of the superhero genre the need for actors to look like powerhouses has become commonplace. However, what marked out this role, in Day-Lewis terms was that his character wasnt just very fit, he was an extremely capable frontiersman. In fact, he was more than this he was a Mohican, albeit an adopted one. Part and parcel of this 18th century Mohican identity was the ability to easily look after oneself in the wild, so Im sure you can see where this ones going. Not content with putting on substantial muscle mass for the part, Day-Lewis mastered several survivalist techniques including how to track and skin animals, how to build canoes and just for sh**s and giggles, how to throw tomahawks, in order to better understand his character. Spurred along by director Michael Mann, who held the view that if Daniel Boone (the man upon whom the character was based) was able to easily live in the wilderness for two years, then dammit, so should whoever chooses to play him. Day-Lewis the nutcase that he is happily obliged him and became this extremely capable outdoorsman, using his new-found skill-set to live in the wild for stretches of time. But while this is all well and truly crazy, what really made the lunacy hit home was Day-Lewis need to be proficient with a flintlock rifle. Let me explain: back in frontier times everybody and their mums were packing heat, meaning the standard of shooting was extremely high. This was often because of necessity; if a grizzly bear/Frenchman/angry rival tribesman is capable of wandering off with your family at any given point, you need to be able to use a weapon. Not to mention that oftentimes, your boomstick would find you your dinner. Such an environment breeds expertise, so Day-Lewis by his own rigorous standards didnt need to be just good at shooting, he needed to be
frontier good. So what do you think he did? Well, Im sure you can figure it out. He practised every day with his rifle, refusing to part with it for the months of preparation, as well as throughout the film shoot. Rumour has it he even kept it at the table for his Christmas dinner, and thats honestly not a joke. But when you see what hes able to do with that rifle on screen, youd argue that its worth it; theres one famous scene where he manages to reload the weapon on the run with his teeth. These feats simply arent possible with your standard weapons training; they requires a certain mastery not really seen outside experts and nutjobs, two categories Day-Lewis capably straddles. All this added up to an incredible performance. Despite being perceived as an arty-farty actor-type, Day-Lewis pulled off his role as a hard-bitten man of the world with aplomb, receiving his standard Best Actor nod in the process. The reason for such praise was simple he really wasnt pretending; he actually became a hard-ass, entirely because the part demanded it. After this shoot he was so damned formidable, they couldve carved him out of rock. One of his eyebrows could kick your ass, and thats not bad for the middle-class son of a Poet Laureate.