Movie misfits take Tinsel Town by storm

They're character actors with the accent on character, but no-one in Hollywood can ignore Daniel Day-Lewis and Tilda Swinton...

DANIEL DAY-LEWIS

BEST ACTOR

EIGHTEEN years after he won an Oscar for My Left Foot with his extraordinary portrayal of the Irish writer Christy Brown, Daniel Day-Lewis emerged again from his famously private life in Ireland to claim his second trophy as best actor for his part as a snarling, haunted oilman.

Day-Lewis lived in a tent on a deserted Texan oilfield to grasp his character during the filming of There Will Be Blood, it is claimed, in keeping with his reputation as the ultimate method actor, one Hollywood has embraced.

He is in the film for almost of all of its 158 minutes. The line he bellows during its violent climax, "I drink your milkshake!" is already part of Hollywood lore, with parodies, YouTube videos and a dance mix.

Dubbed a new Marlon Brando, but coming from a family of artistic royalty, Day-Lewis has reserved his talent for a small number of well chosen films, from his breakthrough in My Beautiful Launderette to The Last of the Mohicans. There was an air of inevitability about his triumph yesterday, as he dismissed the likes of George Clooney and Johnny Depp after sweeping the BAFTA, Screen Actors Guild, and Golden Globe awards.

But his win, along with British actress Tilda Swinton's, was described as a testament to an old school of dedicated British acting, rooted in a more theatrical tradition and focused on the work rather than the celebrity.

"I was knocked out by the film, I think it is amazing, and I wouldn't have complained if There Will Be Blood had been best film and best director," said Jim Hickey, a former director of the Edinburgh International Film Festival. It was a better piece of work, he said, than the Coen Brothers' No Country for Old Men, which won best film and best directors.

The Oscars this year rewarded unconventional and interesting films, and actors with personalities and artistry, rather than trumpeting the usual parade of celebrities. They also singled out European actors in American arthouse films. There may, though, be a downside. Television viewing figures for the Oscars ceremony have slumped by a third in recent years and there were predictions that this would be the worst yet. At the box office, There Will be Blood has earned less than £20 million since its American opening.

Day-Lewis was eloquent and humble as he accepted his award. He bowed before Helen Mirren, last year's best actress winner for The Queen, and she touched his shoulders with the Oscar. "That's the closest I'll ever come to getting a knighthood," he said.

"My deepest thanks to the members of the academy for whacking me with the handsomest bludgeon in town," the 50-year-old continued. "I'm looking at this gorgeous thing that you've given me and I'm thinking back to the first devilish whisper of an idea that came to him and everything since, and it seems to me that this sprang like a golden sapling out of the mad, beautiful head of Paul Thomas Anderson." Anderson is the film's director.

Born in London and the son of actress Jill Balcon and the Poet Laureate Cecil Day-Lewis, Day-Lewis now holds dual British and Irish citizenship. He lives in Co Wicklow, with Rebecca Miller – the daughter of playwright Arthur Miller – and their two sons. He also has a son from a previous relationship with the French actress Isabelle Adjani.

Deeply protective of his own and his family's privacy, Day-Lewis is renowned for throwing himself into his roles.

Whatever his methods for There Will Be Blood, the effects were as mesmerising as My Left Foot, where he played a character in the grip of cerebral palsy.

Speaking of his latest film Mr Hickey said: "The control he showed, the control in enunciating words, is what is so amazing about him. When he says a sentence he seems to be able to give the exact weight and sound as they should come out. Shakespearean actors can probably do it, but it's rare in a film. There's something about the look of his body, the way he walks."

TILDA SWINTON

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

SHE met the father of her children at Edinburgh's Traverse Theatre and brought her early, offbeat movies to the city's film festival with director Derek Jarman, for whom she was muse and star.

At 47, an age when conventional Hollywood starlets are well past their prime, Tilda Swinton claimed an Oscar for best supporting actress, in a year when the Academy Awards opted for American art-house films starring British and European actors.

"Hollywood is built on Europeans! Go back and look," she was quoted as saying backstage, after France's Marion Cotillard took best actress and Spain's Javier Bardem best supporting actor. "I'm really sad I couldn't give a speech in Gaelic."

Later this year, Swinton may bring another film to the Edinburgh International Film Festival. Burn After Reading is a CIA caper directed by fellow Oscar winners, the Coen brothers. She again stars opposite George Clooney, and the film appears set to premiere at Cannes in May.

The Edinburgh International Film Festival director, Hannah McGill, did not rule out a UK premiere in Edinburgh, where Swinton became patron of the festival last year.

Of the Oscar, Ms McGill said: "Obviously we are thrilled. It's her first time, this is really brilliant, she is really at the crest of her career. She is never going to sell out on the basis of this and make massive blockbusters; she will continue to plough her own furrow."

The line-up for best supporting actress this year was formidable. Swinton won against Ruby Dee, in American Gangster, and Cate Blanchett, in I'm Not There. Carina Chocano, a Los Angeles Times critic, called it "an incredible performance in an unusually strong category", praising Swinton's "devastating" portrayal of an immoral corporate lawyer in Michael Clayton.

Hollywood money, Swinton has said, "makes people snowblind", but she proved no amateur on the Oscars podium. "I have an American agent who is the spitting image of this – really, truly the same shaped head and, it has to be said, the buttocks. And I'm giving this to him," Swinton said, of her agent, Brian Swardstrom.

Then she teased her Michael Clayton co-star. "George Clooney, you know, the seriousness and the dedication to your art, seeing you climb into that rubber batsuit from Batman and Robin, the one with the nipples, every morning under your costume… on the set, off the set, hanging upside down during lunch. You rock, man."

Katherine Matilda Swinton was born in London, the daughter of Major-General Sir John Swinton, and lived an army brat's childhood following her father, a former lord lieutenant of Berwickshire, through overseas postings.

But it was also a privileged upbringing, at the West Heath school, where Princess Diana was then a pupil, and then at Fettes College in Edinburgh.

A member of the Communist Party at Cambridge University, soon after graduating she joined the Royal Shakespeare Company. But she soon left, complaining later it treated actors "like paper knickers". By the mid-1980s, she was at the Traverse. It was the platform for her long collaboration with Jarman and where she met the Scottish playwright John Byrne.

Growing fame may have already claimed its price for Swinton. When she won the Bafta for best supporting actress, journalists seized on the fact she brought along her lover, Sandro Kopp, 17 years her junior. The 68-year-old Byrne, her long-time partner and father of their ten-year-old twins, stayed at home in Nairn. She had met Kopp on the set of The Chronicles of Narnia.

German-born Kopp was reportedly at her side for the Oscars, which Byrne had no television to watch. "The first I knew of it was when my phone rang at two minutes past four," Byrne said. "I was half-asleep and could only hear this quiet voice on the other end whisper: 'I've won!' Of course it was Tilda. I am so thrilled for her."

WHO WON WHAT ON HOLLYWOOD'S BIGGEST NIGHT OF THE YEAR

BEST PICTURE: No Country For Old Men

BEST DIRECTOR: Joel and Ethan Coen, No Country For Old Men

BEST ACTOR: Daniel Day-Lewis, There Will Be Blood

BEST ACTRESS: Marion Cotillard, La Vie En Rose

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Tilda Swinton, Michael Clayton

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR: Javier Bardem, No Country For Old Men

BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM: The Counterfeiters (Austria)

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE FILM: Ratatouille

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY: No Country For Old Men

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY: Juno

BEST MUSIC (SCORE): Atonement

BEST MUSIC (SONG): Falling Slowly, Once

BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE: Taxi To The Dark Side

BEST DOCUMENTARY SHORT SUBJECT: Freeheld

BEST VISUAL EFFECTS: The Golden Compass

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY: There Will Be Blood

BEST ART DIRECTION: Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street

BEST ANIMATED SHORT FILM: Peter And The Wolf

BEST SHORT FILM: Le Mozart Des Pickpockets

BEST COSTUME DESIGN: Elizabeth: The Golden Age

BEST MAKE-UP: La Vie En Rose

BEST SOUND MIXING: The Bourne Ultimatum

BEST SOUND EDITING: The Bourne Ultimatum

BEST FILM EDITING: The Bourne Ultimatum