Daniel Day-Lewis, (real name Daniel Michael Blake Day-Lewis) born April 29, 1957 in London, is a British-Irish actor. He is the son of the poet Cecil Day-Lewis, Knight of the Order of the British Empire, born in Ireland but having lived most of his life in England where he became Poet Laureate of Queen Elizabeth II in 1967. Her mother, actress Jill Balcon, is an Ashkenazi Jew and the daughter of Michael Balcon, director of Ealing Studios. At the beginning of the 1990s, Daniel Day-Lewis met Isabelle Adjani, with whom he had a son, Gabriel-Kane, born in 1995 a few months after their separation.

After his theater debut in Bristol, he obtained his first extra role at the age of 14, in John Schlesinger's film, Sunday Bloody Sunday, where he was not credited in the role of a young vandal. In In the Name of the Father, in 1993, in which he played Gerry Conlon, unjustly accused of an attack perpetrated by the Provisional IRA. Daniel Day-Lewis loses several kilos to prepare for the role, regains his Northern Irish accent in front of and behind the cameras; he also spent several weeks in the cell and asked to undergo a harsh interrogation session for three days, requiring technicians to throw buckets of ice water at him and insult him. Recognized for the dramatic intensity of his compositions as striking as they are diverse (aristocrat, petty thug, marginal or criminal) by directors such as Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, Stephen Frears, Jim Sheridan, Paul Thomas Anderson and James Ivory, he is also renowned for being one of the most selective international actors, appearing in only five films between 1998 and 2010. A follower of The Actors Studio Method, Day-Lewis is famous for the extreme and constant involvement he gives to his characters, the long research he undertakes and the significant preparation time he requires for each of his roles.

His portrayal of Christy Brown in My Left Foot (1989) won him the Academy Award and BAFTA for Best Actor; he also won the Academy Award, BAFTA, Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Actor for his roles as Daniel Plainview in There Will Be Blood (2007) and Abraham Lincoln in Lincoln (2012). One of the most awarded actors in contemporary cinema, he is also the only actor in the world to date to have won three Oscars for best actor, an award for which he was also nominated three times, for his roles as Gerry Conlon in In the Name of the Father (1993), William Cutting in Gangs of New York (2002) and Reynolds Woodcoks in Phantom Thread (2017).

In 2013, he was included in Time's list of the hundred most influential people in the world. In 2014, he was elevated to the rank of Knight Bachelor by Queen Elizabeth II for services to the British arts. In December 2017, Phantom Thread was released, his second collaboration with filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson. On June 20, 2017, the actor declared that this was his last film and announced his retirement, after twenty films (excluding his first film, where he was uncredited) and his status as a leading actor. to win the Oscar three times.