I can't honestly account for the very personal response that I have to one story and not another, a sense of an orbit, the orbit of a world that draws me as my own life recedes.
Daniel Day-LewisRead
As actors, we're all encouraged to feel that each job is the last job. They plant some little electrode in your head at an early stage and you think, 'Be grateful, be grateful, be grateful.'
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote emphasizes the importance of gratitude and the ephemeral nature of acting jobs.
Daniel Day-Lewis reflects on the pressure that actors feel to be thankful for each role, suggesting that this mindset stems from the insecurity of the profession. By treating each job as potentially the last, actors cultivate a profound appreciation for the opportunities they receive, fostering resilience and dedication in an industry known for its unpredictability.
Themes
GratitudeActingOpportunitySuccessResilience
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech at a film festival, one could use the quote to highlight the importance of appreciating every moment in one's career.
More from Daniel Day-Lewis
All quotes →One of the great privileges of having grown up in a middle-class literary English household, but having gone to school in the front lines in Southeast London, was that I became half-street-urchin and half-good-boy at home. I knew that dichotomy was possible.
Daniel Day-LewisRead
You don't merely give over your creativity to making a film - you give over your life! In theatre, by contrast, you live these two rather strange lives simultaneously; you have no option but to confront the mould on last night's washing-up.
Daniel Day-LewisRead
When I've gone back to work, it's always with that sense of inevitability. That may be a complete delusion, but it's the one that I need to get out of bed and go about my business. That sense that I can't avoid this thing. I better just get on with it.
Daniel Day-LewisRead
I suppose it's a very highly developed form of denial, but some part of me completely denies that I'm a performer.
Daniel Day-LewisRead
I don't torture myself. And I do the work because of the pleasure involved. I'm satisfying a compulsion I find nigh-on irresistible. It's not necessarily because of the work itself. I just feel the need for a period of regeneration afterwards. Like leaving a field fallow when you've grazed too much on it. I feel depleted.
Daniel Day-LewisRead
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