Free Republic

Three-time Oscar winner Daniel Day-Lewis, widely considered one of the preeminent actors of his generation, is retiring from acting, Variety has learned. The 60-year-old star, who has played presidents, writers, and gang leaders in a career that has spanned four decades, has one final film awaiting release, “Phantom Thread,” a drama set in the world of high fashion. It is scheduled to hit theaters on December 25, 2017 and reunites him with Paul Thomas Anderson, who directed Day-Lewis to a best actor Oscar in 2007’s “There Will Be Blood.” Day-Lewis intends to help promote the movie, according to a person...

What is it about Abraham Lincoln that has captured the hearts and minds of the American public since his assassination nearly 150 years ago? After all, one could argue -- rather persuasively -- that our 16th president was the least qualified candidate ever elected to high national office; in fact, his public service record included just four terms in the Illinois state legislative, one unremarkable term in the House of Representatives, and two unsuccessful bids for the US Senate. In addition, he had virtually no executive experience and, as his contemporaries invariably pointed out, Lincoln seemed wholly unfit to lead...

Every schoolchild with enough smarts and curiosity to get beyond the latest video game of "Call of Duty" ought to go see "Lincoln," the movie, and check out the references and his own attention span. It requires patience, but it shows through dramatic action how a self-taught rustic from the deep backwoods had the emotional and intellectual discipline to overcome poverty and grow up to be a president to rank among the greatest. This is not about the American Dream or a Horatio Alger story. (Does anybody remember him?) Nor is it mythmaking. It's made of sterner stuff than that....

DreamWorks Studios just announced that Daniel Day-Lewis will take on the role of President Abraham Lincoln in the long-in-development biopic to be directed by Steven Spielberg. Lincoln, which playwright Tony Kushner has adapted from the Doris Kearns Goodwin book Team of Rivals, has been on Spielberg's docket for years, with Liam Neeson once attached to star as the 16th president. Kushner also co-wrote Spielberg's Munich, which earned him an Academy Award nomination. Kathleen Kennedy and Spielberg are producing the project, which the director will begin filming next fall. “Daniel Day-Lewis would have always been counted as one of the greatest...

I must confess that I never liked playwright Arthur Miller's work, even though I never really publicly criticized it. As an Ivy-educated, Ivy-employed intellectual, I was supposed to think he was deep. All the right people agreed on that point. So I sat through performances of his most famous work, Death of a Salesman, on several occasions, in the company of my parents at first, and as a season ticket holder at a couple of repertory theatres in adulthood. But I always found Death to be tedious and pretentious. The author must have been a rather unpleasant man, I would...