Arguing whether Daniel Day-Lewis is a greater actor than, say, Laurence Olivier is like arguing whether Messi is more talented than Pelé. It's not just down to the statistics
Statistically speaking, with his third best actor Oscar in hand, Daniel Day-Lewis is now officially the greatest actor of all time. But statistics lie. Richard Burton, the greatest actor of his generation, was nominated for six Oscars and never won. Roberto Benigni did. Cary Grant, who almost single-handedly invented motion pictures, never won an Oscar. F Murray Abraham did. Heath Ledger, the most gifted actor of his generation, won his first and only Oscar – for best supporting actor – after he was dead. Art Carney, Nicolas Cage and Richard Dreyfuss were all very much alive when they were singled out as best actor of the year. Yes, Art Carney. As previously noted, statistics lie. Especially when they involve Nicolas Cage.
Arguing whether Daniel Day-Lewis is a greater actor than Laurence Olivier, or Richard Burton, or Marlon Brando, is like arguing whether Messi is more talented than Pelé, whether Napoleon Bonaparte edges out Alexander the Great as a military genius, whether John Coltrane gets the nod, creatively speaking, over Miles Davis. These boys are all in the same general ballpark. I personally prefer Denzel Washington, who makes one bad film after another but who always manages to be brilliant in them. He's like the leading scorer on a very bad team; the team is going to lose, but Denzel is going to rack up lots of points. And, much like Day-Lewis, Denzel makes everybody else in his films look like clowns.
Unlike Denzel, Day-Lewis does not make films with the guy from Green Hornet. He doesn't make films like Meet the Fockers. It is unlikely that he ever will. He almost certainly has the highest ratio of outstanding films to total films made in the history of motion pictures. This is one thing that separates him from Olivier. He never makes a bad film. Well, not a truly bad film, such as Clash of the Titans, or The Betsy (Olivier), or Cleopatra (Burton), or The Island of Dr Moreau (Brando). He is a class act and so far he lacks that cash-the-cheque cynicism to which most great actors succumb. (See Caine, Michael, Jaws IV.) Be that as it may, Brando and Burton and Olivier and Caine are all a whole lot more fun than Daniel Day-Lewis. So are Robert De Niro and Gene Hackman and Dustin Hoffman and Jack Nicholson. Nicholson is a lot more fun. So is Sean Penn. And Al Pacino used to be. They are all great movie stars in the way that Daniel Day-Lewis is a great actor. In this sense, Daniel Day-Lewis most closely resembles John Gielgud: peerless, brilliant, but not exactly a barrel of laughs.
In bringing the revered, beloved Abraham Lincoln to life, Day-Lewis has now officially been canonised by the powers that be. People who saw Lincoln honestly believed that they were seeing Honest Abe up there on the screen. This did not happen when Nick Nolte played Thomas Jefferson or Anthony Hopkins played Richard Nixon. The dude has skills. Indeed, he was so good in Spielberg's stuffy, overly litigious film that no one even talked about anyone else winning the Oscar this year. Daniel Day-Lewis has thus achieved the same status as Olivier: He is the actor against whom all other actors are now measured.
"He's pretty good but he's no Laurence Olivier," people used to say about Charlton Heston and Steve McQueen. This is what those in the know will now say about anyone who dares to get in the ring with the star of My Left Foot, Gangs of New York and Lincoln, not to mention In the Name of the Father and The Last of the Mohicans. "He's good, but he's no threat to Daniel Day-Lewis." With Lincoln, Daniel Day-Lewis has taken up residence in the Pantheon. And, by the looks of things, he's just getting warmed up.
This article was amended on 25/02/2013. The name Messi was wrongly spelled Massi.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2013/feb/25/oscars-2013-daniel-day-lewis
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