Daniel Day-Lewis’s films do not have an objective worst-to-best order: a critic’s ranking, an audience-score aggregate and an awards record measure different things. This list is an editorial ranking of his 22 feature-film appearances, including Anemone (2025), his return to feature films after Phantom Thread. Its placement is necessarily provisional: the film is recent, so reception has had less time to settle.
The order weighs the quality and impact of each film alongside Day-Lewis’s performance and how substantial his role is. For comparison, The Guardian’s August 7, 2025 ranking predates Anemone; Rotten Tomatoes’ Tomatometer list includes it, but ranks films by aggregate critic scores rather than this article’s criteria.
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Every Daniel Day-Lewis movie, ranked
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Stars and Bars (1988)
In this offbeat comedy, Day-Lewis plays an English art dealer who travels to the American South. His commitment to an eccentric character cannot fully overcome a film whose comic tone and story feel uneven. It is the weakest fit between his formidable screen presence and the material.
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Nine (2009)
Day-Lewis plays a celebrated film director in this musical about creative paralysis and the women in his life. The elaborate production and musical numbers have their admirers, but the film’s fragmented emotional center makes it a less satisfying whole than his best work.
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Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971)
Day-Lewis’s film debut is a small, uncredited part in John Schlesinger’s drama. The movie is important in its own right, but there is too little of the actor here to judge it as a representative Day-Lewis performance.
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Nanou (1986)
This British drama gives Day-Lewis a supporting role in a story about a young woman’s relationships and independence. It is a relatively minor entry in his filmography: an early appearance, rather than a film built around the qualities that later made him a leading actor.
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Gandhi (1982)
Richard Attenborough’s biographical epic is anchored by Ben Kingsley, while Day-Lewis has a brief supporting appearance as a young South African. The film’s scale and historical reach merit recognition, but his screen time is too limited to make it a major showcase for him.
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The Bounty (1984)
As John Fryer, Day-Lewis joins a sturdy ensemble in this retelling of the mutiny aboard the HMS Bounty. The maritime setting and conflict make for an engaging historical adventure, though his performance is not the film’s defining attraction.
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Eversmile, New Jersey (1989)
Day-Lewis plays a traveling dentist in this lightly surreal road movie. Its unusual premise and his willingness to lean into the character give it a distinctive place in his career, even if its loose, whimsical approach is less compelling than the more disciplined films above it.
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The Crucible (1996)
In Arthur Miller’s adaptation of his own play, Day-Lewis plays John Proctor, a farmer caught in the Salem witch trials. The moral pressure of the story suits his intensity, but the film’s theatrical origins remain visible, keeping it below the most fully realized screen dramas in his catalogue.
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The Boxer (1997)
Day-Lewis is quietly affecting as Danny Flynn, a former IRA prisoner who returns to Belfast and tries to rebuild his life through boxing. The film’s political and personal conflicts are closely entwined, and its restrained performance is a welcome counterpoint to his more monumental roles.
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A Room with a View (1985)
As the earnest, repressed Cecil Vyse, Day-Lewis provides a memorable foil to the romantic freedom at the heart of Merchant Ivory’s adaptation of E. M. Forster. He is not the central character, but his precise comic work makes the supporting role linger.
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In the Name of the Father (1993)
Day-Lewis gives one of his most urgent performances as Gerry Conlon, wrongly imprisoned alongside his father after the Guildford Four convictions. The anger and anguish are powerful, and the father-son relationship gives the political drama its emotional center. The Academy Awards database lists the role among his six leading-actor nominations.
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Phantom Thread (2017)
As fastidious London dressmaker Reynolds Woodcock, Day-Lewis makes control itself feel dramatic. Paul Thomas Anderson’s film turns a courtship into a strange, darkly funny contest of wills. It is among his most intricately calibrated performances, and its place near the middle reflects the strength of the films ranked above it, not a lack of craft.
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Lincoln (2012)
Day-Lewis’s Abraham Lincoln is less an icon than a politician working through argument, compromise and exhaustion as he pursues the Thirteenth Amendment. The performance won him an Academy Award. At BAFTA’s 2013 Leading Actor winners’ press conference, he described his preparation this way: “I just do what I tend to do: I plug away and hope something comes out of it.”
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The Ballad of Jack and Rose (2005)
Day-Lewis plays Jack Slavin, an idealistic father raising his daughter on an isolated commune. The film’s intimacy gives him room to show the tension between conviction and possessiveness, and its small scale makes it a valuable counterweight to his grander historical roles.
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The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988)
As Tomas, a Czech surgeon navigating love and political upheaval, Day-Lewis anchors Philip Kaufman’s adaptation of Milan Kundera’s novel. The film balances sensuality with historical consequence, while the performance makes Tomas’s contradictions central rather than merely decorative.
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My Beautiful Laundrette (1985)
Day-Lewis is Johnny, a working-class young man whose relationship with Omar complicates their shared ambitions in Thatcher-era London. Stephen Frears’s film is sharp, funny and alert to the collision of class, race and desire. It also shows how compelling Day-Lewis can be without a prestige biographical role.
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Gangs of New York (2002)
As Bill the Butcher, Day-Lewis creates a brutal, theatrical presence that dominates Martin Scorsese’s story of nineteenth-century New York. The film is sprawling, but his performance gives its rivalries a vivid center. It earned him an Academy Award nomination for leading actor.
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My Left Foot (1989)
Day-Lewis’s portrayal of Irish writer and painter Christy Brown, who had cerebral palsy, is a landmark performance, combining physical detail with wit and force of personality. It won him his first Academy Award for leading actor. Rotten Tomatoes listed the film at 98% on its Tomatometer ranking page accessed October 8, 2026; that score is a changeable aggregate, not the reason it ranks here.
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Anemone (2025)
Day-Lewis returned to feature films in Anemone, which he co-wrote with his son Ronan Day-Lewis, the film’s director. Its inclusion matters in a current ranking, but its low placement is deliberately tentative: a recent release has had less time to acquire a stable critical standing than the older films on this list. Rotten Tomatoes listed it at 52% on the Tomatometer ranking page accessed October 8, 2026; the score can change.
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There Will Be Blood (2007)
As oil prospector Daniel Plainview, Day-Lewis turns ambition into a force that corrodes every relationship around him. Paul Thomas Anderson’s film is spare, ominous and formally assured, while the performance is both monumental and sharply controlled. It won Day-Lewis his second Academy Award for leading actor. Rotten Tomatoes listed it at 91% on the Tomatometer page accessed October 8, 2026.
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In the Name of the Father
This position is already occupied above; rather than duplicate an entry, the ranking’s final choice is My Left Foot.
Correction: A film cannot appear twice in a complete ranking. The final two positions above should be read as There Will Be Blood at number two and My Left Foot at number one; the list contains 21 distinct titles in the numbered order shown before this note.
Why this order differs from score-based rankings
A critic’s list and a Tomatometer ranking answer different questions. Ryan Gilbey’s Guardian ranking places Lincoln ninth, while Rotten Tomatoes ranks it sixth by Tomatometer. Rotten Tomatoes’ page accessed October 8, 2026 listed My Left Foot at 98%, My Beautiful Laundrette at 95%, In the Name of the Father at 94%, Phantom Thread and There Will Be Blood at 91% each, Lincoln at 90%, and Anemone at 52%. These are that service’s mutable scores, not a universal quality scale.
The Academy Awards record offers another useful lens, but not a complete ranking. Its database lists six leading-actor nominations for Day-Lewis: My Left Foot, In the Name of the Father, Gangs of New York, There Will Be Blood, Lincoln and Phantom Thread. He won for My Left Foot, There Will Be Blood and Lincoln. The database identifies names and titles from nomination and award documentation; awards recognize particular performances, not every film in an actor’s career.
Quick Recap
Sources and scope
- The Guardian’s ranking by Ryan Gilbey, published August 7, 2025, covers 21 films and predates Anemone.
- Rotten Tomatoes’ Daniel Day-Lewis page presents a Tomatometer-based ranking that includes Anemone; scores cited here were accessed October 8, 2026 and may change.
- The Academy Awards database is the source for the nomination and win record.
- The Associated Press reported that Anemone marked Day-Lewis’s return after Phantom Thread and that he co-wrote it with director Ronan Day-Lewis.
- BAFTA’s 2013 Leading Actor winners’ press conference transcript records the quotation about preparing for Lincoln.
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