Director gets his man after months of campaigning. As reported at Popcorn last week, Daniel Day-Lewis is set to make his big-screen comeback in 'Gangs Of New York'.
The 'In The Name Of The Father' star will be re-teaming with 'Age Of Innocence' director Martin Scorsese in the $80million gangster drama, which starts shooting this August.
Day-Lewis's last film was 'The Boxer', four years ago, and he's spent the last few years living with wife Rebecca Miller in Ireland. (The two first met on the set of 'The Crucible', written by Rebecca's playwright father, Arthur.)Scorsese spent several months trying to coax the actor out of semi-retirement to replace Robert De Niro, who dropped out when it became apparent that the film would be filmed in Rome.
In 'Gangs Of New York', Day-Lewis will play the wonderfully-titled Bill the Butcher, alongside Leonardo DiCaprio and Cameron Diaz.
Liam Neeson and Pete Posthlethwaite are still in talks to star.
NY Post 5-11-00
Thursday, 11-May-2000
IT'S taken a gang to coax Oscar-winning actor Daniel Day-Lewis out of hiding. Leader of the pack Martin Scorsese is negotiating with Day-Lewis, absent from screens since 1997's "The Boxer," to star in his upcoming epic "Gangs of New York," alongside Leonardo DiCaprio and Cameron Diaz.
The much-anticipated project, which has a budget of $80 million and starts shooting in Rome in August, is set in 19th-century Gotham during the peak of Tammany Hall's political corruption.
DiCaprio plays Amsterdam, who organizes street gangs in an effort to control New York's street wars between Italian and Irish immigrants.
He becomes romantically and professionally entangled with a master thief named Jenny, played by Diaz, who is currently filming "Charlie's Angels" with Drew Barrymore and Lucy Liu.
Day-Lewis would play Bill the Butcher, the man who stands in the way of DiCaprio's character, Variety reports.
"Gangs of New York" is a labor of love for Scorsese, who first conceived the idea a decade ago and has co-written the screenplay with Jay Cocks.
The "GoodFellas" director, who is also courting Liam Neeson and Pete Postlethwaite for "Gangs," has reportedly been trying for months to get Day-Lewis to commit to the Miramax-Touchstone project.
Talks with the actor, who worked with Scorsese on 1993's "The Age of Innocence," began in earnest after the script underwent a rewrite