Stephen Graham recalls intense Daniel Day-Lewis encounter on Gangs of New York set

‘I’ll never forget it,’ actor said

Stephen Graham has recalled the extent of Daniel Day-Lewis’s method acting habit while working on Gangs of New York.

This is England star Graham met Day-Lewis, who has reneged on his plans to retire from acting, when they were in Rome to shoot Martin Scorsese’s 2002 historical epic.

In the period film, which follows a long-running Catholic-Protestant feud, Graham played the smaller role of criminal Shang opposite Day-Lewis’s William Cutting, also known as Bill the Butcher.

Before cameras started rolling, Graham met Day-Lewis in the gym and the pair struck up a camaraderie, doing some martial arts-based fitness training methods together

When the day of filming rolled around, though, there was a change. Graham told The Guardian: “On the day of filming, I’m sitting in the chair in makeup, and Daniel comes walking through in full regalia.

“I’ll never forget it. He looks in the mirror, puts his hand on my shoulder, and he goes, ‘From now on, I call you Shang and you call me Bill.’ And I just went, ‘OK, Bill,’ and that was it. We were locked in.”

Day-Lewis, who is considered one of the greatest actors of all time, is known for his method approach, staying completely in character.

Looper once reported that, on the set of Gangs of New York, the actor caught pneumonia after refusing to wear a winter coat in freezing temperatures. Similarly to Graham’s story, he also instructed his cast and crew on Steven Spielberg’s Abraham Lincoln biopic to refer to him as “Mr Lincoln” only.

Day-Lewis also adopted the method acting technique while shooting films including My Left Foot, The Last of the Mohicans and The Crucible, for which he allegedly lived as a farmer on an island where the movie was set to be filmed for two months ahead of time.

Meanwhile, when he starred in Jim Sheridan’s In the Name of. the Father, Day-Lewis is believed to have endured three days in solitary confinement without any water.

Daniel Day-Lewis in ‘Gangs of New York’ (Initial Entertainment Group)

Day-Lewis is thought to have returned from acting after starring in Paul Thomas Anderson’s 2017 film Phantom Thread.

However, it was recently revealed that he will star in his son Ronan’s film Anemone.

The film, which “explores the intricate relationships between fathers, sons and brothers, and the dynamics of familial bonds”, also stars Sean Bean, Samantha Morton, Samuel Bottomley and Safia Oakley-Green.