Daniel Day-Lewis

There Will Be Blood

Interviewed by Rob Carnevale
“ Close to the borderline of chaos is the most fertile area that you can work in. ”

Daniel Day-Lewis is often described as one of the most talented and influential actors of his generation. Since becoming noticed alongside Mel Gibson and Anthony Hopkins in The Bounty, he continued to enhance his reputation in films like My Beautiful Laundrette and The Unbearable Lightness of Being before stealing the Oscar from right under Tom Cruise's nose for his portrayal of Christy Brown in My Left Foot. Since then, he's never been far from awards shortlists or end of year best of lists with roles in The Last of The Mohicans, In The Name Of The Father, The Boxer and Gangs of New York. His latest finds him playing a ruthless American turn of the century oil prospector in Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood. He discusses some of the challenges with BBC Movies...

What was your reaction as you flicked through the script and saw so many pages without dialogue during the opening of the film?

That was delightful actually. I have a paradoxical relationship with language anyhow, having come from a household where language was so important. I turned page after page and thought: "How long can he keep this going for?". There was something almost cheeky about it, but delightful and true, first and foremost it seemed true, that the life of this man in this situation could be revealed in such a way that you knew everything that you needed to know about him at that stage in his life without ever saying a word. I just thought there was something quite remarkable about that. In fact, it's actually a much longer sequence in the script and we shot a much longer sequence which then - when the film was put together - would have gone on for probably about 30 minutes had we not had to necessarily try and condense it. It was a whole overture.

Daniel Day-LewisI guess there's plenty of potential research material here for your role as Daniel Plainview. How far did you go into that?

Not very far, except I read the book [Oil! by Upton Sinclair]. The first 150 pages or so introduce you to the world of the oilfields at that time, and there's a lot of great detail about the world of the drillers and the prospectors. The second part of the book is almost like an examination of the conflict between labour and management, which is a different kind of thing altogether but nonetheless fascinating. Upton Sinclair was a very committed, lifelong socialist and it was kind of amazing he survived in America at that time. So yes I've read the book. But there were no clues there other than the introduction to the oilfields.

I studied the life of [turn of the century American oil tycoon] Edward Doheny only insofar as I learnt about the main events of his life. Los Angeles was actually founded on muck, it's an amazing thing, if you see the early photographs dating back to that period. It's actually a forest of oil derricks with tiny little houses sandwiched here and there in between them. If you happened to live in one of those little houses and stepped out of the front door, what you would be confronted by would be a quagmire of crude oil just running down the streets. Your kids would be playing in that stuff. That was the world, and Los Angeles grew out of that and was founded on that wealth. Doheny was one of the principal characters in the building of that city. Indeed, there's a Doheny Drive named after him and probably some other roads. We filmed the last couple of scenes of the movie in the Doheny Mansion which, in every respect, feels like a pyramid, a monument that a pharaoh built for his own quiet, self destruction. It's interesting.

Did you visit any oil rigs?

No. It was rumoured apparently that I'd built a derrick in a field behind my house in County Wicklow, and I must say when I read that I thought: "That's not a bad idea, I might try that!" But we were a bit short on help at the time. 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, but people tend to focus on the details of the preparation, the practical details in this clinic or that prison and so on and so forth. I'm sure you know what I'm talking about. But for me as much as that work is a vital part of it and always fuel to one's fascination, one's curiosity, the principal work is always in the imagination. That's where it's going to happen if it's going to happen anywhere at all. The imagination in very close working partnership with the subconscious, I think, because when the work is happening the way it should be you can't be entirely in control of it. Paul [Thomas Anderson] is a mischief-maker; he's a great man for working close to the borderline of chaos and I think that's really the most fertile area that you can work in.

Daniel Day-Lewis and Paul Dano

Did the father-son relationship in the film have any bearing on your own complex relationship with father, or your relationship with your son?

My relationship with my own father was much less complex than you might have been led to believe. He was just a man I never really got to know, so there's nothing really complex about that. In later years, reassessing what might have been a relationship with my father, that's where the complexity is, I suppose, because we all to some extent measure ourselves - if we're men - we measure ourselves against our fathers. I would hope that none of my experiences as a father would have fed the relationship Plainview has with HW [his son in the film]. I would hope. In fact, it probably worked against me a little bit, because I felt so protective of that wonderful young man, to the point where he'd almost be swatting me off like I was an irritating mosquito or something [smiles].

The film contains a number of amazing set pieces. Were some of them just one off chances, such as the burning of the oil rig? Or could you have more than just one take?

In that case no. In fact, I don't know how many times the burning of that bloody rig was put on the schedule. We all thought we should do something else first because there was only one derrick and that was the centrepiece of our world that [production designer] Jack Fisk had built for us. In a way, part of it was that we didn't want to lose it as well. We knew that we'd feel the absence of that beautiful thing when it was gone, but more than that it was a big risk. This was a big story to tell, the schedule was 60 days which is not nothing but it's not a long shoot either to tell that story. So, it was relentless and there was so much to do every day. And there was no going back if we'd got the burning of the derrick wrong - we'd have been absolutely shagged. But we had a good guy called Steve Cremin, who was strangely an ex-tennis pro, and he really just did everything right, thank God.

Your co-star Paul Dano was also in The Ballad of Jack and Rose, so was this a chance to pick up your relationship?

Yeah. I certainly knew enough about Paul and I hope he'd say the same, to know that he'd be somebody I'd know I wanted on my side in a scrap. I admired him so much in Rebecca [Miller]'s film. We never really spoke, and we never met socially during that time because the work led us in different directions. He understood implicitly, as I did, that it was important to keep that distance between us. But we got to know each other a little bit after that and I like him so much as a man - which always helps - but as an actor I think he's undoubtedly one of the most promising young actors working at the moment.

Are there any others you admire?

There's a few really good ones... Emile Hirsch and Ryan Gosling. I don't know if Ryan is a little bit older, but they're more or less part of the same generation, wonderful actors. But I was delighted at the thought of working with Paul again. Actually, when we cast the film originally we cast somebody else in the part of Eli and we shot for three or four weeks with a different actor. But it didn't work out for a number of reasons. It's the only occasion in my life that, during the course of a piece of work, we had to re-cast and re-shoot stuff which I wouldn't wish on anybody. Paul as already contracted to play the part of Paul, and we'd all considered him for Eli already, so it seemed like an obvious choice. He flew out to what he thought would be one of his scenes as Paul and we asked him what he thought about also playing Eli and he never went home again. He had two days to prepare for the part. He came out on a Friday evening and we were shooting scenes on Monday with him. And I swear to God on set that day he was a recognisable, fully formed character. I dare say he was slightly unsettled in himself, but you wouldn't have guessed it. He was just right there.

How aware of movies are you when you're not making them and how aware were you of someone like Paul Thomas Anderson? Are directors a lure to you or is it all about the script?

Initially it's all about the script. But in his case, I certainly knew his films and already admired him a great deal. And most particularly for his recent film Punch-Drunk Love. So even the very idea of working with him when the word came was something I was intrigued by. Nonetheless, had I read that script and not felt drawn into the world that he'd created, out of respect for him I'd have said: "Get somebody else, because I can't help you here." But I was very drawn to the idea of working with him.

There Will Be Blood opens in UK cinemas on Friday 8th February, 2008.