Daniel Day-Lewis (There Will Be Blood) There Will Be Blood

Daniel Day-Lewis won his second Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance as Daniel Plainview — a role Paul Thomas Anderson wrote specifically for him and that producer JoAnne Sellar said might have killed the project if Day-Lewis had declined. The performance is built on voice, physicality, and a refusal to let the audience inside the character's head through conventional means.

Day-Lewis built Plainview's voice from historical recordings and John Huston

Day-Lewis described the character's voice as something he heard before he attempted to produce it. He studied period documentaries, read letters from historical oilfield workers, and drew vocal inspiration from recordings of director John Huston — the deep, oily confidence that sounds reasonable even when saying monstrous things.

"I felt immediately drawn into the orbit of a world that I knew nothing about... I was lost." — Daniel Day-Lewis, Cinephilia & Beyond

On the Charlie Rose show, Day-Lewis explained his process for finding the vocal register: "I like to kid myself into thinking that I can hear that voice before I try and make the sound of it. It begins with hearing it." He acknowledged the Huston comparison that many critics made, noting that "the vigour and delivery of his voice suddenly came into my mind from nowhere." (nofilmschool, faroutmagazine)

The preparation lasted over a year but Day-Lewis resists the "method" label

Day-Lewis spent more than a year developing the character before cameras rolled. He read Upton Sinclair's Oil!, studied the life of oil baron Edward Doheny, and immersed himself in the period. Production designer Jack Fisk built a period-accurate room behind Day-Lewis's house in Marfa so the actor could stay in character between shooting days. Costume designer Mark Bridges noted that Day-Lewis treated the character's hats as essential, taking three options home for three days before selecting one. (alltherightmovies)

Yet when asked directly about special preparations, Day-Lewis pushed back against the mythology.

"For me, to fuel one's fascination, one's curiosity, the principal work is always in the imagination." — Daniel Day-Lewis, Chicago Movie Magazine (2007)

He described the early phase as "many months in apparently listless rumination, out of which I hope something will emerge." In a 2025 interview, he went further: "Considering the way that I work very often, I do feel I've been soundly misrepresented so many times that there's almost no point in even talking about it." (variety)

Day-Lewis improvised the oil pitch and broke a rib in the mine shaft

Plainview's introduction speech to the Little Boston landowners — "I'm a family man. I run a family business" — was largely improvised by Day-Lewis. Anderson called it "delicious. It was Plainview on a platter." The speech became the template for how the character operates: performing sincerity for audiences who need to believe him. (alltherightmovies)

During the opening mine shaft sequences, filmed at the Presidio mine in Shafter, Texas, Day-Lewis broke a rib. Anderson's response was characteristically unsentimental: "Now we're making the movie." (alltherightmovies)

"Everything you needed to know about that man, you discovered without any single person saying a word." — Daniel Day-Lewis, on the wordless opening, Cinephilia & Beyond

The performance operates at the juncture of realism and theatrical spectacle

Critics recognized that Day-Lewis was doing something more complex than naturalistic character work. The performance has the scale of a stage actor — the booming voice, the physical command — housed inside a film that insists on documentary-level period detail.

"A thrilling performance, among the greatest I've seen... purposefully alienating and brilliantly located at the juncture between cinematic realism and theatrical spectacle." — Manohla Dargis, The New York Times (2007)

"His performance is genius (and I use that word advisedly)." — Richard Schickel, TIME (2007)

Roger Ebert described the voice itself as "made of oil, gristle and syrup. It is deep and reassuring, absolutely sure of itself, and curiously fraudulent." The fraudulence is the point — Plainview's voice is a tool, the same way H.W. is a tool, deployed to acquire what he wants from people he despises. (rogerebert.com)

Day-Lewis swept every major acting prize

Day-Lewis won the Academy Award, the BAFTA, the Golden Globe (Drama), the Screen Actors Guild Award, and critics' circle prizes from Los Angeles, New York, and the National Society of Film Critics. It was his second Oscar, following My Left Foot (1989), and he would win a third for Lincoln (2012) — the only actor in history to win three Best Actor Oscars. (wikipedia)