My first thought was, What is this about? Within about an hour I called this number and I spoke to Noel Pearson, who I’d never met before, and he said: ‘We are thinking of doing this film. “It was all there – the pan up to the face of Christy Brown. “The first thing I read was this description of a foot,” he said. The white packet, which seemed “almost luminous”, caught his eye, and, with little else to do at the time, he ripped it open and began reading. He remembers living in an empty house in west London at a time of unemployment when the script came through his letter box. After 10 pages he had turned to the front page and thought, I’ve heard this story before, but I was so drunk I didn’t remember.”ĭay-Lewis’s version doesn’t entirely tally with this.
“I told Daniel Day-Lewis the story of Christy Brown,” Pearson said. I did it for a week and then I thought, What the f**k am I doing this for? Feed yourself. I'd have to feed him his food in the canteen. Day-Lewis, not yet the legend he was to become, was also at the bash.ĭaniel Day-Lewis stayed in character. He remembered being at a party for the composer Elmer Bernstein, who would go on to write the score for My Left Foot. Noel Pearson’s version is not exactly contradictory, but it suggests other routes to the same destination. He said: ‘You know Daniel Day-Lewis has an Irish passport?’ And it just went: ding!” he told Ryan Tubridy. “Daniel Day-Lewis was suggested to me by Pat O’Connor. The story of how Daniel Day-Lewis, a man with deep Irish connections, ended up with the role has been many times revised in the telling. My Left Foot: Christy Brown with his parents in October 1954 "I was in New York and I read My Left Foot again and I thought, I'll have a go at this," he remembered on a documentary some years later. It seems to have begun with the unstoppable impresario Noel Pearson. My first thought was, What is this about? Noel Pearson said: 'We are thinking of doing this film. The first thing I read was this description of a foot. It now looks as if My Left Foot, the story of one stubborn Dubliner with cerebral palsy, helped launch (for good or ill) an unexpected period of national confidence. Day-Lewis, who played Brown so memorably, and Brenda Fricker, moving as his indefatigable mother, both won Academy Awards.Ī few months later, the Republic of Ireland soccer team had that breathtaking run at Italia ’90. Up to that point, Irish films were as rare as Irish aircraft carriers. Thirty years ago, Jim Sheridan's My Left Foot, the stirring story of the writer and painter Christy Brown, had its premiere in Dublin. The distinguished actor, long resident in Ireland, made some contribution to those changes. “Dubliners are hugely generous people,” Daniel Day-Lewis said some years ago.
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