Daniel Day-Lewis's Chart In His Own Words

Daniel Day-Lewis as Abraham Lincoln.

Sitting in a darkened cinema and watching Daniel Day-Lewis filling up and spilling out of the screen is a pleasure: sometimes terrifying, sometimes heartbreaking, always visceral.

He's an actor who gets right into your guts.

There's no time of birth for him, but I'd put money on around 10.30am, putting his Moon exactly opposite Neptune, planet of illusion and delusion, and Pisces, Neptune's sign on the MC, the career angle.

"I suppose I have a highly developed capacity for self-delusion, so it`s no problem for me to believe I`m somebody else."

Day-Lewis was born on the day of the New Moon in Taurus, the sign of the builder. Taurus is slow, cautious and constructive.

"I like taking a long time over things and I believe that it's the time spent away from the work that allows me to do the work itself."

birth time unknown

Electrifying Uranus, the planet of difference is in a T-square with the Neptune-Moon-Sun opposition, drawing the energy out and pulling it taut like the string on a bow. If Uranus is in the first house, then we, the audience, are the targets of that arrow. Uranus is the planet of the outsider too. Many of his best roles – from Johnny in My Beautiful Launderette to Lincoln – have been as outsiders who triumph.

"If I weren`t allowed this outlet, there wouldn`t be a place for me in society."

"Why would I want to play middle-aged middle-class Englishmen?"

Day-Lewis is a chameleon when it comes to both accent and voice; this seems to be based on a deep feeling for language. He has a conjunction of Mercury (words and voice) and Venus (beauty) in Taurus. Venus  rules Taurus, of course, so she is exceptionally powerfully placed here. But what is more, this conjunction joins the South Node, the place from which we come, what we take for granted.

Venus in Taurus loves clothes. And no wonder he liked wearing
this clobber. Sandy Powell deservedly
won the Best Costumes Oscar for Gangs of New York.

"I come from not just a household but a country where the finesse of language, well-balanced sentence, structure, syntax, these things are driven into us, and my parents, bless them, are great custodians of the English language."

That earthy Mercury-Venus throws a trine to a Jupiter in the sign of craft, Virgo. Day-Lewis legendarily works very, very hard at his roles, reading around the parts, staying in character throughout the shoot. For The Age of Innocence, he strolled around New York for months in 19th century costume.

In other words, as you would expect from sensual Taurus Sun, he needs to feel the part physically. It's interesting that he's played several real characters – Christy Brown, Gerry Conlon and now Lincoln. Two of which gained him a gong.

 "For a few years at school I tried to play the roles they wanted me to play, but it became less and less interesting to ponce around the place. Even now, when I sometimes think of doing a play, I think of rehearsal rooms and people hugging and everyone talking over cups of coffee because they are nervous. It`s both very touching and it makes me a little nauseous and claustrophobic. Too much talk. I don`t rehearse at all in film if I can help it. In talking a character through, you define it. And if you define it, you kill it dead."

Thus speaks Mercury in Taurus, opposite North Node in Scorpio. He's using the Taurus physicality as a platform to explore the Scorpio emotional depth. (This would also fit with a possible Cancer Rising.)

"I prefer the abstract concept of incoherence in the face of great feeling to beautiful, full sentences that convey little emotion."

An interesting point of view for the son of a poet-laureate.

Finally, with Saturn in Sagittarius, work needs to be a big adventure for him. It needs to broaden his horizons every time.

"I avoid talking about the way I work. But in avoiding it I seem only to have encouraged people to focus their fantasies about me in an ever more fantastical way."

Better stop there then.

PS. Day-Lewis is having an exact - to the minute - nodal return today, the day he won his third Oscar.