"I suppose I have a highly developed capacity for self-delusion, so it's no problem for me to believe that I'm somebody else"
About this Quote
Day-Lewis frames his famously surgical craft as a kind of elegant pathology. “Highly developed capacity” borrows the language of virtue and training, then swerves into “self-delusion,” a word that should sound like a warning label. That tension is the point: he’s puncturing the romantic myth of the actor as a magical empath while still claiming a near-superhuman skill. The joke lands because it’s both self-mockery and a flex. If it’s delusion, it’s also mastery.
The line also smuggles in a darker subtext about identity as performance. “Believe that I’m somebody else” isn’t “pretend” or “play”; it’s belief, a psychological buy-in that treats the self as porous. In a celebrity culture obsessed with “authenticity,” Day-Lewis implies authenticity might be the least interesting thing about a person. The self is mutable, even negotiable, and he’s simply better at negotiating it than most.
Context matters: this is a star whose reputation for method acting became its own genre of headline, equal parts awe and eye-roll. By calling it self-delusion, he anticipates the criticism (is this indulgent? unhealthy?) and preemptively disarms it with candor. The intent isn’t to diagnose himself so much as to reframe acting as controlled madness: a disciplined surrender to illusion. He makes the private mechanism public, then shrugs, as if to say: you wanted the secret; the secret is I’m willing to lie to myself more completely than you are.
The line also smuggles in a darker subtext about identity as performance. “Believe that I’m somebody else” isn’t “pretend” or “play”; it’s belief, a psychological buy-in that treats the self as porous. In a celebrity culture obsessed with “authenticity,” Day-Lewis implies authenticity might be the least interesting thing about a person. The self is mutable, even negotiable, and he’s simply better at negotiating it than most.
Context matters: this is a star whose reputation for method acting became its own genre of headline, equal parts awe and eye-roll. By calling it self-delusion, he anticipates the criticism (is this indulgent? unhealthy?) and preemptively disarms it with candor. The intent isn’t to diagnose himself so much as to reframe acting as controlled madness: a disciplined surrender to illusion. He makes the private mechanism public, then shrugs, as if to say: you wanted the secret; the secret is I’m willing to lie to myself more completely than you are.
Quote Details
| Topic | Truth |
|---|
More Quotes by Daniel
Add to List
