My mother and I were talking about Daniel Day-Lewis the other day, and I was surprised to learn that she doesn’t find him sexy. My mom’s favorites are men like James Garner, Jack Nicholson, and George Clooney, if, in my mom’s words, “he’s not being so boring and artsy-fartsy like he was in Solaris”. Daniel Day-Lewis is dark and brooding, he’s got the accent, he seems like a decent family man in real life, and he’s got talent oozing out of his pores. What’s not to love? Well, my mom thinks he’s a “strange bird” and he seems “off”. To me, however, Daniel is the total package – I love his voice, I love his talent, I love the strange way he dresses (he really does have style!) and I love the way he looks. He’s not a pretty man, like, say Robert Pattinson. But there’s something beautiful about him, I find.

You know who else has a crush on Daniel? Oprah! I finally saw Daniel’s interview on Oprah to promote Nine, and Oprah had to stop herself mid-question to say “you’re so cute!” He is, too. I even like him with the full head of grey hair. Sigh… here’s part of Oprah’s interview with Daniel:

Next up is Daniel’s interview with The Daily Mail. It’s actually a really great piece, and Judi Dench, Marion Cotillard, and Nicole Kidman are interviewed as well. Since I don’t care about those bitches (no… I do, I just want to talk about Daniel), I’ll just give you Daniel’s part of the interview. He’s amazing.

Daniel Day-Lewis has portrayed all manner of hard men in his career: warriors, a boxer, thugs. But the thought of playing a song-and-dance man frightened the life out of him.

Rob Marshall, who made the Oscar-winning Chicago, was determined to secure Day-Lewis to play Guido Contini, an Italian film director suffering a creative and personal crisis in the film musical Nine, certainly one of the year’s best movies and, believe me, the sexiest.

‘Guido is four or five days away from shooting a film and he hasn’t a f***ing idea in his head,’ Daniel told me in Manhattan this week. ‘I did say to Robin the early stages: “Is there any way of getting out of this? I have a list of actors who could do it tomorrow!” He tried to convince me I could sing and I said: “You’ve no idea if I can sing or not!”‘

Day-Lewis said the last time he’d sung publicly was when he was in the local church choir when he was a child.

‘I sang feebly a couple of times, and on the grounds of that Rob managed to convince me it was worth pursuing,’ he continued, adding that dancing was out of the question. ‘I know dancers, and I know what they have to do with their bodies. I can do a lot of stuff: I can climb, I can run, I can cycle, I can box. But I can’t dance.’

I’ve seen Nine twice and Day-Lewis doesn’t do a lot of dancing – but his Guido moves with a dancer’s grace. He laughs when I tell him this, eyeing me as if I’d had a few drinks with breakfast.

‘I used a lot of 3-In-1 to lubricate those stiff old joints,’ joked Day-Lewis, 52. ‘It’s not natural grace – that’s sheer effort of will. Like a lot of ageing athletes, I tend to be creaky. I work at staying looser, but my limbs are a mass of scar tissue through years of doing things I shouldn’t have.’

Ultimately, what swung it for him was Marshall’s enthusiasm. ‘Rob’s principal weapon in his armoury is the weapon of constant encourangement,’ he said. ‘It somehow makes you believe this thing isn’t completely beyond your reach.’

While he was finding his singing voice (a rich baritone, by the way), he was able to study why Guido found himself locked in a wasteland of his own making. In his head, all the important women in Guido’s life swirl about in a jumble of fantasy, memory and reality. But at its heart, the film is all about winning back the love of one woman: his wife.

Daniel watched all of his leading ladies rehearse. He would dress in character and sit in a corner for hours and simply observe. Danny Boyle, who directed Slumdog Millionaire, wanted Day-Lewis to play Henry Higgins in the much talked about new My Fair Lady film, but Boyle left the project when he was not able to secure the actor’s services.

Day-Lewis is not keen to talk about it. ‘I feel that until this (Nine) has moved along, I can’t contemplate doing something else,’ he told me.

[From The Daily Mail]

Daniel Day-Lewis as Henry Higgins? I would f-cking die. Previously, I’ve felt very strongly that My Fair Lady did not need to be remade. But Daniel as Prof. Higgins. Oh, yes. Yes, dear God. That would be incredible. If you’d like to see the first trailer released from Nine, go here. There’s a second one with Kate Hudson too – and she sounds good. But here’s the rehearsal footage/montage from Nine:

Stills from ‘Nine’ courtesy of WENN. Additional photos of Daniel at LAX on November 18, credit: Michael Wright/WENN.com