Daniel Day-Lewis quotes: wise famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Daniel Day-Lewis

Daniel Day-Lewis Famous Quotes & Sayings

Discover top inspirational quotes from Daniel Day-Lewis on Wise Famous Quotes.

I'm not picky, quite honestly.

I made the film in spite of Harvey, not because of Harvey.

I have always been intrigued by these lives I have never experienced.

I depleted myself to the point where I had nothing left.

Where I come from, it was a heresy to say you wanted to be in movies, leave alone American movies.

To people who don't know me I'm defined by a number of things that people know about me that are entirely untrue.

Just stay alive, no matter what occurs! I will find you. No matter how long it takes, no matter how far. I will find you!

I didn't like the idea of being foolish, but I learned pretty soon that it was essential to fail and be foolish.

It is awesome to feel you are carrying on the family name.

For about a year, I just didn't know what to do. I did laboring jobs, working in the docks, construction sites.

I've been very lucky.

Many years ago, I really didn't know where the next work was coming from.

It's easy to love humanity when you're this far away from it.

Very often there's this misapprehension about actors being people that need to display themselves, to reveal themselves in public.

There must've been some part of me that wanted to make my mark. But there was never a defining moment.

Ireland was a place for the renewal of hope and I still see it like that.

I suppose it's a very highly developed form of denial, but some part of me completely denies that I'm a performer.

I'm not really a storyteller myself - I tend to get all tangled up when I try and tell stories.

Making a film, setting it up and getting it cast and getting it together, is not an easy thing.

Periodically over the years I've always taken periods of time away from acting.

I don't deal at all well with the relative amount of stuff I have to face already.

For as long as I can remember, the thing that gave me a sense of wonderment and renewal ... has always been the work of other actors.

I find it easier to work when it's quiet.

I became conflicted in my late teens.

When I was younger, I made some decisions that I shouldn't have. And, in hindsight, I've almost always been wrong when I haven't listened to myself.

I hate the domestic life.

I'd always felt very strongly in the power of vocation.

I still relate to my father very much. I mean, I talk to him in a certain way, as we do talk to the dead.

I hate wasting people's time.

I suppose I have a highly developed capacity for self-delusion, so it's no problem for me to believe that I'm somebody else!

Everybody has to know for themselves what they're capable of.

I don't feel my son should pay the price for what I do.

I spend many months in apparently listless rumination out of which I hope something will emerge.

I like to cook things very slowly.

I find it difficult to be in rooms now for long periods of time. I can usually take it for about an hour. Then I stride out.

My main memories of my father are of his illness.

I broke things to get attention.

I'm a warrior when it comes to pursuing roles.

How people are around a director, it really does affect everything, every detail of the life of the movie.

I feel less often compelled to do the work than I was in the past.

I'm a little bit perverse, and I just hate doing the thing that's the most obvious.

We all live under some repression; we have to, it's part of the deal.

I like to learn about things.

At some point in your life, if you're lucky, you get to design the way in which things evolve.

If you remain unsettled by a piece of writing, it means you are not watching the story from the outside; you've already taken a step towards it.

If people take an interest in you and they think there's half a chance, they might hang on. It's dreadful.

The last time I was on a small set would've been probably My Left Foot.

I don't torture myself.

My curiosity sustains me for the period of the shoot.

Germans don't speak in a German accent, they just speak German.

God knows, I haven't always been successful.

When I did make the decision to focus on acting, I think my mother was just relieved for me that I had finally started to focus.

How can you be a recluse in a house full of children, even if you had the inclination to be, which I don't?

It must be hard interviewing actors.

The more articulate somebody is, the more suspicious I am of them. I like to feel that the important things remain unsaid.

Acting is about people. Other people. Otherwise, you're not acting, you're doing monologues.

I can't re-examine work I did in the past with pride.

I would wish for any one of my colleagues to have the experience of working with Martin Scorsese once in their lifetime.

I love to sit and watch people. I love to sit and listen to people.

You can never fully put your finger on the reason why you're suddenly, inexplicably compelled to explore one life as opposed to another.

I'm not keen on history being tampered with ... to any extent.

Well, we all have murderous thoughts throughout the day, if not the week.

My preference is that, that day when someone sticks a tripod in front of you with a camera on the top, it is not day one.

I had a very vivid, almost hallucinatory moment in which I was engaged in a dialogue with my father.

I never retreat from films, as it were, I simply indulge in other interests, that's all.

I like things that make you grit your teeth. I like tucking my chin in and sort of leading into the storm. I like that feeling. I like it a lot.

You've just provided me with the makings of one hell of a weekend in Dublin.

I just knew at an early time in my life how important privacy was.

A lot of guys in jail tattoo their hands.

Actors should never give interviews.

If you have a certain wildness of spirit, a cabinet maker's workshop is not the place to express it.

A voice is such a deep, personal reflection of character.

I suppose the place where I live is fairly remote, it would seem remote to some people.

There are always practical decisions to be made about any character you're playing.

It didn't occur to me that it was possible to breathe life into Abraham Lincoln.

I'm not sure you learn anything on film sets.

I'm not actually a big musical fan.

I'm very often still very much alive for that other being and that other world long after the film is finished.

Being at the centre of a film is a burden one takes on with innocence the first time. Thereafter, you take it on with trepidation.

I have a strange relationship with time. I'm not aware of it passing.

Shoes are strange things. If you take your shoes off in a situation in which you're vulnerable, you'll feel 10 times more vulnerable.

I'm woefully one-track-minded.

I live in a landscape, which every single day of my life is enriching.

I think some actors thrive on working at a much greater pace than I do.

England is obsessed with where you came from, and they are determined to keep you in that place, be it in a drawing room or in the gutter.

I have a competition in me. I want no one else to succeed. I hate most people.

Perhaps I'm particularly serious, because I'm not unaware of the potential absurdity of what I'm doing.

At a certain age it just became apparent to me that this was probably the work that I would have to do.

The whole thing of weight, I guess it's because there is a wider fascination we all have with weight.