Want to know the best Daniel Day-Lewis movies? How about the worst Daniel Day-Lewis movies? Curious about Daniel Day-Lewis’ box office grosses or curious which Daniel Day-Lewis movie picked up the most Oscar® nominations and Oscar® wins? Need to know which Daniel Day-Lewis movie got the best reviews from critics and audiences? Well you have come to the right place….because we have ranked all of his movies Best to Worst in 4 different categories.
Daniel Day-Lewis (1957-) seems to be the polar opposite of Adam Sandler. Sandler’s movies are generally hated by critics but pull in the masses when they open in theaters. Meanwhile Day-Lewis’ movies are loved…and I mean a deep love….by critics and by Oscar voters®….. but generally fail to put much of a dent at the box office. If you could merge Sandler’s box office with Day-Lewis critical approval you would have the greatest movie star ever. Coming to theaters near you Daniel Day-Sandler in Gangs of Waterboys.
Daniel Day-Lewis is the only actor to ever win 3 Best Actor Oscars®. Even more amazing than his record breaking Oscar® glory is the fact that he has only acted in 16 theatrical movies since 1982. His IMDb page shows 28 acting credits since 1971. After taking away his television appearances and straight to DVD movies we are left with 16 movies to rank. In the table below, Ultimate Movie Rankings ranks those 16 movies in 6 different sortable columns.
Daniel Day-Lewis Movies Ranked In Chronological Order With Ultimate Movie Rankings Score (1 to 5 UMR Tickets) *Best combo of box office, reviews and awards.
Daniel Day-Lewis Movies Can Be Ranked 6 Ways In This Table
The really cool thing about this table is that it is “user-sortable”. Rank the movies anyway you want.
- Sort Daniel Day-Lewis movies by his co-stars of the movie
- Sort Daniel Day-Lewis movies by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost
- Sort Daniel Day-Lewis movies by yearly domestic box office rank
- Sort Daniel Day-Lewis movies how they were received by critics and audiences. 60% rating or higher should indicate a good movie.
- Sort by how many Oscar® nominations and how many Oscar® wins each Daniel Day-Lewis movie received.
- Sort Daniel Day-Lewis movies by Ultimate Movie Rankings (UMR) Score. UMR Score puts box office, reviews and awards into a mathematical equation and gives each movie a score.
Possibly interesting things about Daniel Day-Lewis
1. Daniel Day-Lewis was born in London, England on April 29, 1957.
2. Daniel Day-Lewis’s track to stardom. Day-Lewis studied acting at the Bristol Old Vic School. He got his first screen appearance in 1971’s Sunday Bloody Sunday. Eleven years later he appeared in a brief scene in Gandhi. From there he got a supporting role in 1984’s The Bounty. His role in The Bounty lead to critical received acting roles in two 1986 movies…My Beautiful Laundrette and A Room With A View. Since then it has been one award winning performance after another.
3. Daniel Day-Lewis has married one time…to Rebecca Miller (1996-). They got married in 1996 and have two children. That made writer Arthur Miller his father-in-law.
4. Daniel Day-Lewis has been nominated for 5 Best Actor Oscars®. He won for 1989’s My Left Foot, 2007’s There Will Be Blood, and 2012’s Lincoln. His other two nominations were for 1993’s In The Name Of The Father and 2002’s Gangs of New York.
5. Daniel Day-Lewis is tied with Walter Brennan, Jack Nicholson, Ingrid Bergman, Meryl Streep for 2nd place with 3 acting Oscars®. Katharine Hepburn is the leader with 4 acting Oscars®.
6. Daniel Day-Lewis is a legend when it comes to how he prepares for a role.
- Killed all his own food for Last Of The Mohicans
- Learned an entirely new language for The Unbearable Lightness Of Being
- Broke his own ribs for My Left Foot
- Lived as an 1870s gentleman for The Age of Innocence
- Went to prison for In The Name Of The Father
- Didn’t wash for The Crucible
- Became a professional-standard boxer for The Boxer
- Left his wife for The Ballad Of Jack And Rose
- For more detailed information on these points check out this link.
7. Some quotes: “He is widely acclaimed for his meticulous acting, which he worked on like a mad scientist who works on an invention” and “His total attention to externals, makeup, hair, clothing, manner of walking, gesturing and speech are mind boggling”. Sound like these quotes would accurately describe Daniel Day-Lewis….but they are actually quotes about Oscar® winning actor Paul Muni. Muni was a movie star in the 1930s and 1940s who was probably the first method actor. Seems that Day-Lewis is following in the footsteps of Muni when it comes preparing for a movie role.
8. Roles Daniel Day-Lewis turned down or was seriously considered for: Batman Begins (Christian Bale part), The English Patient (Ralph Fiennes part), Interview With A Vampire (Tom Cruise part), Philadelphia (Tom Hanks part), Sleepy Hollow (Johnny Depp part), Pulp Fiction (John Travolta part) and Lord of the Rings trilogy (Viggo Mortensen part).
9. Is one of 8 actors to have won the Academy Award, BAFTA Award, Critics’ Choice Award, Golden Globe Award and SAG Award for the same performance.
10. Currently Daniel Day-Lewis does not have a new movie listed on IMDb.
Academy Award® and Oscar® are the registered trademarks of the Academy of Motion Arts and Sciences. Golden Globes® are the registered trademark and service mark of the Hollywood Foreign Press.
Check out Steve’s Daniel Day-Lewis You Tube Video
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5/I don’t let an actor’s politics affect my enjoyment of his screen persona and I like for example as you well know both The Duke and Mr Mumbles who had sharply contrasting political ideologies. It’s sad to see people who are NOT politicians falling out over them when some of the politicians themselves can live with their differing views enough to be friends with each other.
6/For example Tory Ken Clarke and Labour’s John Prescott belong to the same highly exclusive Jazz club and [dressed in the costume of the club – large black brimmed hats and black cloaks] they sit at the same table in the club drinking together as they listen to their jazz music. They were captured on TV doing just that.
“This is the most in-love couple that I’ve ever signed up and yet SHE’s an anti-war pro-abortion bisexual and HE’s a born again Christian right-wing redneck!” Entertainment players’ agent Bebe Glaser in the TV sitcom Frasier.
7/There’s no doubt though that if you did allow a star’s politics to put you off him/her The Duke was the guy who would do just that as probably more than any other actor he pushed his politics [even on screen] into the faces of his audiences; and Day-Lewis would not have liked The Duke’s politics.
8/I wouldn’t waste too much time pondering whether Daniel will show up again on screen
because over the years he has come and gone many times. Goodness knows where he is at the moment. He could be in his cobbler’s shop or could even be in say Virginia. A lot of these wandering boys” seem to end up there eventually. If I ever went there I would expect to see “MISSING” posters at every street corner.
Bob, I’ll bet Daniel liked John Wayne and his westerns when he was young, but growing up and reading that John Wayne supported the Vietnam war amongst other things must have made his nostrils flare. 😉
Boo hoo I say. I hated the Vietnam war and have watched more films starring John Wayne than any other actor. I don’t let things like that spoil my movies. Charlton Heston is still probably my favorite actor. I didn’t let his pro-gun politics bother me in the slightest.
I’ve never been a fan of Woody Allen but not because of certain allegations in his private life, I just didn’t fancy his films. But I will watch a few occasionally. I enjoyed Match Point and Scoop. And I thought his voice work in the animated film Antz was perfectly intune with his onscreen persona.
Added Steve’s DDL video to this page. Our thoughts found on his page are found below.
“I have seen 16 of the 20 movies listed here. Missing out on #20. #19, #18 and #14 The Boxer. He is a great actor who has not made many movies. And now it appears he is retired. Favorites would include #12 The Bounty…though he is barely seen in that one and his performance in Gangs of New York. Other than that…I respect his acting, I know his movies are good, …yet I do not rewatch any of his movies. This acting legend is well deserving of some Top 10 Charts attention. Voted up and shared.”
Hi Bruce, only 20 films he wasn’t very prolific, and eventually he got bored of the whole thing.
The Last of the Mohicans is the DDL film I’ve watched the most times. I even have the soundtrack on CD. Your tally 16, mine 7, Flora 3. Thanks for the vote, share and comment, much appreciated.
BEST STILLS DAY-LEWIS VIDEO
1/Opening one of young Daniel
2/Eversmile NJ
3/very raunchy one for Nine
4/Phantom Thread
5/The Boxer
6/The Crucible
7/The Bounty
8/The Age of Innocence – my very favourite Day-Lewis film
9/two for Gangs of New York
10/two for Last of the Mohicans
11/My left Foot.
As Daniel made relatively few movies you didn’t have the usual volume to choose from but what is in the video is first class and a lot of it is unusual because Daniel made some off beat films for a major performer; so on the basis of quality I enjoyed it to the tune of a 98% rating.
You and the Big Boy agree on 3 of Daniel’s Top 5 best reviewed films: There will Be Blood; Lincoln and Name of the Father
BEST SETS OF POSTERS IN DAY-LEWIS VIDEO
1/Start and Bars – both entries
2/Nanou
3/Eversmile NJ
4/Ballad of Jack and Rose
5/first one for Phantom Thread
6/2nd one for The Crucible
7/1st one For Gangs of NY
8/very raunchy 2nd one for Unbearable Lightness
9 1st one for Last of the Mohicans – Daniel showing us his great range**
10/first one for My left Foot
11/Gandhi
12/There will be Blood – all entries.
13/Room with a View**
**these two along with Scorsese’s Age of Innocence are my fave Day-Lewis flicks.
STEVE: First thanks for the reply on Ladd/Shane. I agree the theme music was first class. I’ve mentioned before that Daniel is the ‘Bruce Cogerson’ of movie stars as down the years he has gone missing for long periods and apparently found therapeutic solace in mending footwear in a tiny cobbler’s shop owned by his relatives in a small village in Southern Ireland.
He seems to have disappeared again for a while as in the past 10 years he has made just 2 movies [Lincoln in 2012 and The Phantom Thread in 2017] and a video short in 2018. However he can afford these ‘sabbaticals’ as his current net worth is quoted at $50 million [and one can be sure he didn’t accumulate all that wealth by simply mending shoes].
Whist his overall box office has never been vertiginous [his total adjusted US gross being around the $1 billion mark] he is exceptionally well regarded artistically with IMDB quoting 146 acting awards and 89 nominations for him. That site ranks him the 5th greatest actor of all time after just Nicholson/Brando/DeNiro and Pacino. In Bruce’s 25 Greatest Male legends 1950-2010 Daniel is ranked 25th. Of course he holds the record for Best Actor in leading role Oscars – 3 of them.
On top of his movie career he appeared in 8 television productions between 1980 and 1986 and 15 stage presentations between 1979 and 1989 including the role of Hamlet in 1989.
He appeared too as the fabled Alucard in a 1981 stage play about the great Vampire Count. It will be seen though that whilst he has shown up for film work at lease sporadically in recent years the other two mediums have not attracted him for over 30 years. No future acting projects in any medium are quoted for him at present.
Hi Bob, thanks for reviewing my Daniel Day-Lewis video, the generous rating, info and trivia is much appreciated. Happy you liked the picture gallery.
I wonder if he’s serious about retiring this time, how old is he, 63? Christopher Plummer is 90 and still busy picking up awards and nominations.
I wonder if Tom Cruise bears a grudge against DDL, his one big chance to win an Oscar for Born on the Fourth of July was scuppered when DDL won for My Left Foot. Cruise had earlier won a Golden Globe for Best Actor beating DDL so he must have thought he was the favorite for the top prize.
Actors pretend they don’t care about awards but they do, they burst into tears and wet themselves when they read that they’ve been nominated. They’re only human after all. 🙂
Five of Daniel’s 20 films have scored 10 out of 10 from my sources –
There Will Be Blood
Gandhi
A Room With a View
My Left Foot
My Beautiful Launderette
Four more scored 9 – Lincoln, Unbearable Lightness of Being, In the Name of the Father and The Last of the Mohicans.
There Will Be Blood tops both IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes charts, on Bruce’s critics chart it’s tied to first place with Phantom Thread, the latter didn’t make my top 10.
“Laurence Olivier might have been a much better actor on film if he hadn’t had that flippant attitude. He was a remarkable actor, but he was entirely missing the point consistently. He felt that film was an inferior form.”
“I don’t particularly like westerns as a genre, but I do love certain westerns. High Noon means a lot to me–I love the purity and the honesty, I love Gary Cooper in that film, the idea of the last man standing. I do not like John Wayne–I find it hard to watch him. I just never took to him.
And I don’t like James Stewart as a cowboy. I love him, but just not as a cowboy; Mr. Smith Goes to Washington is one of my favorite films. I love Frank Capra. I love Preston Sturges. But we’re talking about westerns… I have always admired Clint Eastwood’s westerns. The spaghetti westerns were a great discovery.
And Five Easy Pieces. It’s not really a western, but it is about the possibilities that can be found in the West. Jack Nicholson is sublime in that film, just sublime. It’s the most stultifying portrait of middle-class life. You want to flee from that world and head anywhere less civilized. Which is, of course, the appeal of the West: It’s not tamed yet.”
HI STEVE: Very comprehensive feedback from you especially boosted by the range of interesting quotes from Daniel. He certainly has his own opinions on other actors; Joel wouldn’t tell HIM what to think! My own further thoughts are:
1/Cruise was just about the biggest star around when Born on 12th was released so as you say he must have fancied his chances for an Oscar that year.
2/Jimmy’s westerns in the 1950-55 period are what drew me to him at first and probably made him my favourite star of the 1950s. Just as I didn’t care much for the young Al Leach and his screwball comedies I never really took to the pre-western Stewart and the films he made apart from It’s a Wonderful Life and Hitchcock’s Rope.
3/A lot of historians credit the westerns for changing Jimmy’s persona for the better and may even have saved his career; because even though he is my all time fave along with Peck and Widmark and Laddie I would be the first to admit that like the younger Archibald the boyish looking Jimmy of the thirties and forties did look a bit of a “sissy”.
4/Some professional film historians have opined that Olivier was too theatrical orientated to make a GREAT screen actor as each of those mediums require different types of acting skills. Nevertheless back in Larry’s heyday he shared glory with Tracy and Brando as the actors with the most awards perceived as the major ones like Oscar and Golden Globe.