Director Martin Scorsese’s 2002 movie Gangs of New York featured some of the best Hollywood stars like Leonardo DiCaprio, Daniel Day-Lewis, Cameron Diaz, and Jim Broadbent. However, assembling this cast, particularly Day-Lewis, was a tough task. DiCaprio was assigned by Scorsese to convince Day-Lewis, who had retired from acting at the time, to star in the film. Their first meeting ended up being an awkward silent contest as they didn’t speak to each other for quite some time.
Scorsese reportedly spent twenty years developing the project and Gangs of New York was finally completed by 2001, however, the release date was pushed to December 20, 2002, due to the September 11 attacks. Upon release, it met with praise from fans and critics all over the world.
Leonardo DiCaprio and Daniel Day-Lewis’ first meeting was quite awkward
In 2014, actor Leonardo DiCaprio appeared for an online Screen Actors Guild interview and revealed that he was assigned to convince actor Daniel Day-Lewis to come out of retirement in order to star in Martin Scorsese’s 2002 movie Gangs of New York. The actor recalled (via Daily Express),
“I went to his brownstone (house) and sort of knocked on the door and he opened the door. He goes, ‘Shall we walk?’ And I go, ‘OK’. We started walking through Central Park and he didn’t say anything to me for the first couple of minutes, so I said, ‘Alright, I’m not gonna say anything to him either’. So we kind of walked in silence for about 10 minutes through Central Park. We sat down and we started talking about acting. I immediately asked him, I said, ‘Look, there’s a role of a gangster in turn-of-the-century New York, who’s a butcher, who carries butcher knives with a top hat and a moustache in a Martin Scorsese movie. Who in their right mind wouldn’t do this?”
After 1997’s The Boxer, Daniel Day-Lewis went into semi-retirement and returned to his old passion of woodworking. The actor went to Florence, Italy, where he also became interested in shoe-making.
After Leonardo DiCaprio failed, Tobey Maguire convinced Daniel Day-Lewis
DiCaprio further explained in the interview that Day-Lewis wasn’t convinced after their awkward meeting. It was actually actor Tobey Maguire’s words that convinced Day-Lewis,
“We went out to dinner… and it was actually Tobey who said to him, ‘Y’know, when somebody has a talent like yours, it’s almost their responsibility to do it, to get back in the saddle.’ I think he slightly disagreed with him at first, but eventually, thank God, he said yes.”
Daniel Day-Lewis then gave an iconic performance as Bill “the Butcher” Cutting in the movie, which grossed over $193 million worldwide on a budget of $97-100 million. In 2017, Daniel Day-Lewis officially retired from acting, leaving behind a remarkable filmography that will inspire many aspiring actors.
