Daniel Day-Lewis

In the Name of the Father

Unemployed young Irishman Gerry Conlon (Daniel Day-Lewis) gets by as a petty thief in 1970s Belfast. When local IRA leaders get fed up with him, he flees to England and meets up with his friend Paul Hill (John Lynch). On the same night that the IRA bombs a nearby pub, the friends get kicked out of their communal digs and are forced to sleep in a park. He returns to Belfast, but is arrested as the prime suspect in the bombing and imprisoned, where he spends 15 years trying to clear his name.

My Left Foot

No one expects much from Christy Brown (Daniel Day-Lewis), a boy with cerebral palsy born into a working-class Irish family. Though Christy is a spastic quadriplegic and essentially paralyzed, a miraculous event occurs when, at the age of 5, he demonstrates control of his left foot by using chalk to scrawl a word on the floor. With the help of his steely mother (Brenda Fricker) -- and no shortage of grit and determination -- Christy overcomes his infirmity to become a painter, poet and author.