Laundrette with a View

Daniel Day-Lewis

You can't really see Rupert Everett or Jeremy Irons getting a part in a film by writing a threatening letter to the director, but that is precisely what Daniel Day-Lewis did. The part was that of Johnny, the thuggish, racist, gay, streetwise baddy-cum-goody in My Beautiful Laundrette, and as Dan was intelligent, liberal, heterosexual, and posh (his father was poet laureate Cecil DayLewis), the director had qualms about his suitability. "I wrote saying that if he valued his legs he should let me in," says Dan.

Originally made on a tiny budget for British television, Laundrette was a startling popular and critical success on both sides of the Atlantic, due largely to Day-Lewis's extraordinary performance. The critics singled him out again for his role as Helena Bonham Carter's cold-fish fiance in Merchant-Ivory's A Room with a View.

Day-Lewis is currently onstage at London's National Theatre playing the Russian revolutionary poet Mayakovski, having recently portrayed Kafka for the BBC. And although the screen seems to love him,

Day-Lewis himself doubts he'll make it to Hollywood: "They're bored with the English now, aren't they?"

Not likely.

Craig Brown