Sure, Sir Daniel Day-Lewis is an okay actor, what with his three Oscars and his four BAFTAs and whatever. And fine, if the apocalypse comes, he can farm with 17th century tools, hunt with 18th century rifles, build a house, furniture, and a canoe and make shoes for everyone. When the zombies arrive, he can box them OR fight them off with a tomahawk. And hell, he probably knows how to find oil. But what he was really meant to do with his life was be a sex symbol.
Look at this man.
Michael Mann’s historical epic The Last of the Mohicans came out 30 years ago this month, and right then and there, Day-Lewis was cemented in the annals of Hollywood as drool-worthy. Previously he’d been your basic Excellent British Actor, playing a convincing priss in A Room With A View and a lovely young gay man in My Beautiful Laundrette. He’d won acclaim for My Left Foot and The Unbearable Lightness of Being, both weighty roles in serious movies. So it was all very par for the course in the life of an actor from the UK. Nobody expected him to bust out a loincloth for his next role, but believe me, he did. Go watch The Last of the Mohicans, I’m not doing all the work for you. The point is, Daniel Day-Lewis was suddenly not only a Very Good Actor, he was screenmeltingly hot.
Brad Pitt? Please. Keep your pretty boys. DDL was a Man. His Hawkeye could not only expertly track and hunt, but he was sensitive enough to then say a prayer of thanks to the animal he’d killed for its meat.
Plus he was sarcastic, as required of everyone in the ’90s. Asked how he could be traveling west when the British army wanted him to stay and fight?
In short, while Mann’s film is a masterpiece, with breathtaking scenery, incredible cinematography, one of the best soundtracks in history, and stunning performances by Madeleine Stowe, Russell Means, Eric Schweig, Jodhi May, and particularly Wes Studi (a national treasure)…some of us saw it five times in the theater just to gawk at Daniel Day-Lewis. He was the perfect man.
Hawkeye carried this really long rifle everywhere, like it was a part of him. I think we all know what that’s a euphemism for. And if you got yourself in trouble somehow, like say you were caught in the middle of the French and Indian War and also there was a Huron warrior pretending to be a Mohawk who wanted to kill you because of a blood feud with your dad? No problem! Your beautiful Englishman raised by Mohicans would come to get you looking like this and killing everyone who stood in his way.
And when you have to part ways, as sometimes happens, this is how he says goodbye.
The thing is that when Hawkeye says he’ll find you, you believe it because the movie has already shown us that he can track anything, anticipate enemies’ actions, shoot accurately from incredible distances, come up with creative solutions to problems, fight with different weapons in each hand, and tell really interesting bedtime stories. If he were a woman, you might even call him a Mary Sue! But because of Day-Lewis’s notorious Method acting, we know he can do all these things as well. And that, dear reader, is why he should have been cast as Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings (sorry, Viggo)–he’s basically already that character, only in real life. Plus, again, look at this man.
Instead of cashing in on his insane good looks and ability to perfectly portray the perfect man by starring in every movie Brad Pitt, George Clooney, and Jude Law ever made, Day-Lewis chose to go be the greatest actor alive. What a waste, am I right?
Anyway, the year after The Last of the Mohicans came out, Daniel Day-Lewis starred in In the Name of the Father, which has nothing to do with how hot he is, but clearly the marketing team was on my wavelength because for their movie about the injustices of the Irish Troubles, they just went with a picture of Daniel Day-Lewis’s gorgeous face.
