Daniel Day-Lewis

Day-Lewis’s Hawkeye looks capable of getting people through danger, which matters more to The Last of the Mohicans (1992) than any amount of handsome posing. He gives Michael Mann’s romantic adventure the physical assurance it needs, then commits to the love story without a trace of embarrassment. We found the romance stirring because his confidence in danger gives us a reason to trust him. The performance lets us take the hero seriously without spending the evening marvelling at the actor’s preparation.

That seriousness also needs managing, and Madeleine Stowe’s Cora gives it some useful resistance. Her firmness helps their scenes avoid becoming too solemn, although neither actor supplies much relief from the earnestness. Mann gets a considerable pleasure out of Day-Lewis’s willingness to play heroism straight; a quieter exchange or two might have made the people easier to understand. We would not want a knowing wink from Hawkeye, but we would welcome a little more ease between the two of them.

The breakthrough pair, My Beautiful Laundrette (1985) and A Room with a View (1985), preceded the reputation for immersion established by My Left Foot (1989). Accent work, physical training and research have become central to how he approaches a part. Yet The Age of Innocence (1993), made with Martin Scorsese, is a useful reminder of his restraint and subtlety. We are more interested in that restraint than in accounts of how thoroughly he prepared, because it is something we can actually watch.

His later work with Paul Thomas Anderson includes There Will Be Blood (2007) and Phantom Thread (2017), in a career marked by selective choices and long breaks. The retirement announced after Phantom Thread was followed by a return in Anemone (2025). We need not turn either decision into a judgement on the acting, or approach each appearance as a solemn occasion in itself. If his reputation makes him sound forbidding, start with The Last of the Mohicans and save the accounts of his preparation for afterwards.