pampelmoose Dave Allen of Gang of Four’s Music and Media Blog

Daniel Day Lewis in There Will Be Blood

I very rarely sit down in front of a TV and if I do it’s to scroll through the Tivo, realize nothing I’ve recorded is worth my time and then return to whatever it was I was doing. Last night was an exception, I tuned in to the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) Awards show.
As expected, Daniel Day Lewis won the award for Best Actor for his role in the new Paul Thomas Anderson movie, There Will Be Blood. His acceptance speech made me realize what I’ve already long known, that there are actors and there are great actors. Day Lewis is a great actor. Not for him the crass false emoting that each actor poured out from the podium as they accepted this award and that. He talked seemingly without notes and with such authority that you could have heard a pin drop in the audience. He mentioned that he was challenged to return to acting by the script and it was almost an aside. He saved the best for last though as he eulogized Heath Ledger and his acting work and lamented the loss of someone who he considered a great talent. Of course it was an emotional speech but the media got it wrong today when they ran stories saying that Day Lewis was emotional. He may have been but he didn’t show it, he was a rock and he gave us a glimpse of what makes this man do such amazing work. He was followed by Tom Cruise who comparatively was a shambles and a joke. It’s also a shame that, at least in the portion of the show that I watched, nothing was said to support the writer’s strike.