If , as many observers believe , Daniel-Day Lewis wins the Academy Award for best actor on Sunday , he will become the first man to win three ( Meryl Streep has done this ; Maggie Smith might match her if she wins for her turn in Quartet ) . Such an honor would ratify Day-Lewis ' standing not simply as one of the greatest actors of his time , but for all time . Like Robert De Niro , Day-Lewis is seen as the quintessential method actor , a commitment he has taken to extremes in his well-known penchant for embodying his characters even when the cameras are n't rolling . Day-Lewis also is notable for the extraordinary breadth of roles he has played . He first came to global attention in 1985 when he appeared simultaneously as the priggish Cecil Vyse in the Merchant-Ivory film adaptation of E.M. Forster 's 1907 novel `` Room with a View '' as well as Johnny , the gay East End punk , in Stephen Frears ' brilliantly brash `` My Beautiful Launderette . '' But it has been in playing Americans where Day-Lewis has made his most distinctive impact . Between 1988 and 2007 he played a string of American figures that ranged from a 17th century Puritan ( `` The Crucible '' ) to a contemporary art collector ( the otherwise forgettable `` Stars and Bars '' ) . His turn as the lead character in the 1992 film version of James Fenimore Cooper 's 1825 novel `` Last of the Mohicans '' has become a classic , while his role as the driven oil prospector Daniel Plainview in `` There Will Be Blood '' won him his second Academy Award for best actor in 2008 . For all the range of the characters , however , there is a surprising degree of continuity in this gallery of Americans . The quintessential Day-Lewis character is a frontiersman , even when that frontiersman is disguised as a gang member staking out a territory ( `` Gangs of New York '' ) , or an iconoclastic Manhattan attorney chafing against social convention ( `` The Age of Innocence '' ) on the same New York streets . Day-Lewis always plays a man apart -- someone at odds with the institutional arrangements that surround him . If he is to survive , which in many cases he does not , his protagonists must move to the margins , finding a place on the outskirts of society . It 's in this context that one can begin to appreciate how Day-Lewis 's latest Oscar-nominated performance as Abraham Lincoln breaks fresh ground . For the first time , he 's not playing an estranged outsider , but rather a man at the epicenter of his society , exercising the levers of power to -- successfully -- bend a system toward his will . And that will is not of a personal and/or self-destructive variety ; instead , it 's a collective moral vision codified in a 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution to end slavery . The novelty of the performance does n't end there . We all know about figures who attain greatness in public life but whose private lives are a mess , repellent , or both . Abraham Lincoln has rarely been portrayed as a tyrant ( except by die-hard Confederates ) , but often as inscrutable . But more than any other actor , even Henry Fonda 's folksy `` Young Mr. Lincoln '' ( 1939 ) , Day-Lewis ' version seems like a likable , three-dimensional human being . He seems equally at ease chatting with troops , black and white , as he is in spinning a yarn for his Cabinet . He argues with his wife and son to the point of losing his temper ( there 's a memorable slap at Robert Lincoln , played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt ) . Much has been made of Day-Lewis ' rendition of Lincoln 's voice , free of the stentorian tones one might expect of a man of his literal or figurative stature ; contemporaries reported it as high and reedy , which is how the actor renders it here . This Lincoln is a man of moderation . Though clearly trying to lead public opinion in the face of significant political opposition , he 's no radical ; his foil in the film is Rep. Thaddeus Stevens ( Tommy Lee Jones ) who indeed was part of a Republican-party faction impatient with Lincoln 's pace on emancipation . Stevens is portrayed far more kindly in `` Lincoln '' than he was almost a century ago as the villain of D.W. Griffith 's 1915 epic `` Birth of a Nation , '' but the film ultimately affirms Lincoln 's recognition that compromise ( including possible moral compromise ) is an indispensable element of statecraft . Yet for all the novelty of this performance , the role is of a piece with Day-Lewis ' larger body of work . For while his Lincoln is far more integrated into the fabric of his society than any of his other characters , he remains a man who struggles against a sense of isolation , whether personal or political , amid the maelstrom . Unable to escape the fierce hatreds that rage around him , he becomes a casualty in a war he is determined to prosecute toward a just end . The truest Americans , Day-Lewis seems to be telling us , are those who can never be fully at home in the world : Our collective character is a restless one . It 's an insight with which Day-Lewis may make some history of his own .
Jim Cullen : If Daniel-Day Lewis wins best actor award at the Oscars , it will be a record . Cullen : I think he's going to win. He says the actor 's version of Lincoln seems like a likable , three-dimensional human being . Cullen : Day-Lewis seems to be telling us that the truest Americans are the restless ones .