Looking back at young Daniel Day-Lewis in Gandhi

Do you remember Daniel Day Lewis in Gandhi where he played a racist, bully? 

Daniel Day-Lewis, veteran English actor and three time (yes, three!) Oscar winner, recently announced that after the film he is currently shooting, Phantom Thread is finished, he won’t be working as an actor anymore. That has come as an immense disappointment to his fans. But as a solace, we can still enjoy his work in the films he’s done, and the diverse roles he has played beginning from his debut in Sunday Bloody Sunday as a child actor in 1970. Granted, he has not done many films. But whatever he has done, he has done with utmost dedication, intensity, and finesse.

Probably Day-Lewis is best known for Steven Spielberg’s biopic of the 16th president of the United States called Lincoln as the president himself. But very few people know that this Lincoln had met Mahatma Gandhi in Richard Attenborough’s eight Oscar-winning films Gandhi starring Ben Kingsley. Day-Lewis, 22-year-old then, played a South African racist street bully who insults Gandhi played by Kingsley and bars his way when he is walking on the street with Reverend Andrews. He is then shouted upon by his mother who asks him to go to work. The scene, available on YouTube, is a great watch for Daniel’s fans.

Though this was only the second film of Day-Lewis, the signs of the great actor were apparent who would not gain the star status until The Unbearable Lightness of Being. He then went on to act in the biographical film My Left Foot for which he received his first Academy Award. Incidentally, he is the only actor to win three(!) Academy Awards for Best Actor.