Anglo-Irish poet Cecil Day-Lewis (1904 - 1972) reads congratulatory letters at his home in Greenwich, London, after his appointment as Poet Laureate, 2nd January 1968. With him are his wife, actress Jill Balcon, his daughter Tamasin and his son Daniel (the future actor).
Academy Award winner and 2018 nominee Daniel Day-Lewis is married to wife, Rebecca Miller, and he is the father of three children, all sons. He comes from an acclaimed family, as his father, Cecil Day-Lewis was the poet laureate of England.
Day-Lewis has two children with Miller, and he has a son with his former girlfriend, the French actress and legendary beauty, Isabelle Adjani. With the iconic actor up for another potential Oscar for his role in Phantom Thread, some people are wondering more about his family. It’s certainly a distinguished one in the area of writing and the arts.
Here’s what you need to know:
1. Day-Lewis Is the Son of a Poet Laureate & His Actress Wife
Cecil Day Lewis, his son Daniel and wife Jill reading some of the many letters congratulating him on his appointment as Poet Laureate, 5th January 1968.
Artistry runs in Day-Lewis’ blood.
According to UK Telegraph, Daniel Day-Lewis is the son of the “great Thirties poet Cecil Day-Lewis, Daniel is close to his sister Tamasin, a food writer, as he was to his mother, the actress Jill Balcon, who died in 2009.” However, he was estranged from his half brother, Sean. “I made a terrible mistake by helping an author who was writing a so-called biography of Dan,” Sean told UK Telegraph.
According to the Poetry Foundation, “Cecil Day-Lewis has two contrasting claims on our attention. The first is as an archetypal poet of the 1930s, the first-born, last-named member of the Auden/Spender/Day-Lewis triad, and the only one of those three friends whose commitment to Marxism extended to joining and working for the Communist Party. His second claim to recognition, at least for literary historians, is as the poet laureate of England from 1968 until his death in 1972.”
Cecil Day-Lewis wrote poems under the name C. Day-Lewis. According to The Poetry Archive, he “was born in Ireland in 1904, the son of a Church of Ireland minister. The family moved to England in 1905 and his mother died three years later, when Cecil was four years old.” His epitaph reads,
“Shall I be gone long?
Forever and a day.
To whom there belong?
Ask the stone to say,
Ask the song.”
In 1989, Daniel Day-Lewis claimed to have seen his father’s ghost during a theater performance.
You and read some of Cecil Day-Lewis’ poems here. Day-Lewis once said of his father, “After he died, I reread his poetry and found it tremendously frustrating… the frustration I felt at the turn at the end of the poem, the downward inflection, the melancholia was so prevalent in a lot of his work, and probably something I felt a little touched by and didn’t want to be.”
Day-Lewis’ mother was a film, radio and stage actress. Cecil was known for his affairs. “Among his mistresses was Elizabeth Jane Howard, later the wife of Kingsley Amis, and best friend of Jill Balcon, Cecil’s second wife, the mother of Tamasin and Daniel,” reports The Independent.
2. Day-Lewis’ Sister Tamasin Is a Chef
Poet Laureate John Betjeman attending a memorial service at St Martin-in-the-Fields for his predecessor Cecil Day Lewis, 25th October 1972. He is accompanying Day Lewis’ widow Jill and daughter Tamasin.
Tamasin Day-Lewis, the sister of Daniel Day-Lewis, is also creative, but she’s used her artistry in the kitchen, authoring the cookbook Supper for a Song (Rizzoli), “the follow-up to her culinary travel tale Where Shall We Go for Dinner? (Weidenfeld & Nicolson),” according to a profile in Vanity Fair.
She learned to improvise in the kitchen after eating boarding school food growing up, Vanity Fair reports. Living in a farmhouse in Somerset, Tamasin said she was trained to stay private. “It has been drilled into my family that you don’t talk to journalists, you don’t give anything away. You don’t talk about your father. You don’t talk about your brother. You don’t talk about your grandfather. You just plough your furrow,” she said.
3. Day-Lewis’ Wife, Rebecca, Is the Daughter of Famed Playwright Arthur Miller
Rebecca Miller in 2005.
Rebecca Miller, Daniel Day-Lewis’ wife, is the daughter of the famed playwright, Arthur Miller. Daniel Day-Lewis and Rebecca Miller are the parents of two sons: Ronan and Cashel. Day-Lewis so immerses himself into his characters that his son Ronan once thought he was working on a building site.
The couple married in 1996. Rebecca is a writer. “She is an actress and writer, known for Personal Velocity (2002), Maggie’s Plan (2015) and Angela (1995),” according to IMDB. The site reports that she met Day-Lewis when he visited her father because they were preparing the film version of his play, The Crucible.
Rebecca also wrote a novel called Jacob’s Folly. Glamour Magazine describes the plot: “An 18th century Parisian Jewish peddler wakes up to find himself reincarnated as a fly in 21st century America, able to influence the lives of a fireman and an Orthodox young woman.”
4. Isabelle Adjani Gave Birth to a Son With Day-Lewis
Isabelle Adjani attends “Etre Moderne : Le MoMA A Paris” Exhibition at Fondation Louis Vuitton on October 9, 2017 in Paris, France.
Day-Lewis’ romance with French actress Isabelle Adjani was the subject of much speculation, although he remained tight-lipped on its ending. “For six years, he had a fiery relationship with the beautiful French actress Isabelle Adjani to whom he wrote wax- sealed letters. Day-Lewis is reported to have ended the love affair by fax shortly before she gave birth to his child 18 months ago,” reported The Independent.
According to The Guardian, “Day-Lewis and Adjani split up in 1995 when she was pregnant. He was demonised in the press, which coincided with another lengthy retreat into privacy.” The Guardian asked Day-Lewis about reports he broke up with Adjani by fax.
“I knew at that time only too well what my responsibilities were, and in what sense I had failed myself and people that I loved and so forth,” he told the Guardian. “But I was quite appalled by the extent to which that was taken and elaborated – to the point where I seemed to be like an antichrist. Of course, I found that very hurtful. The reality, the facts of that situation, were hard enough… yes I was vulnerable to that stuff, absolutely.”
For her part, Adjani is said to have commented after Day-Lewis married Miller that the wedding “is the best thing that ever happened to me.” She initially thought he had married someone else, according to The Independent.
According to The Independent, Day-Lewis became involved with Julia Roberts while his relationship with Adjani was fading. “Day-Lewis had asked to be present during the birth in New York and Adjani, while initially thrilled – she still loved him – was later devastated when she concluded that the visit had also been to see Roberts,” the site reported.
5. Gabriel-Kane Day-Lewis Is a Model & Singer
https://www.instagram.com/p/BSedU5aFdwZ/?hl=en&taken-by=gabrielkane
Gabriel-Kane has worked as a model, and he inherited just the right combination of looks from both of his parents. He “recently posed alongside fellow Hollywood offspring Kaia Gerber in a Hudson Jeans campaign and walked the Fall 2015 Chanel couture runway after a chance run-in with Karl Lagerfeld on the street in Paris,” according to InStyle.
On Instagram, Gabriel-Kane Day-Lewis has posted many modeling shots. He also posted a photo of his father, writing, “You shared your talent with the world over many years and it was a gift for us all to cherish. Though the idea of never seeing you on the big screen again deeply saddens me and many others, I am indescribably proud and in admiration of your accomplishments and of you as a man, an artist and a father. You are loved by your family and your family by you. Thank you for everything ❤️”
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bfiq8fXAI2k/?hl=en&taken-by=gabrielkane
He posted one picture with Kendall Jenner. Gabriel Kane is also a singer and musician, who released a single called Lie to Me.
Gabriel-Kane also posted a photo with his father and Rebecca Miller, writing, “happy birthday to one of the most inspiring people in my life. Proud and privileged to be a part of our wonderful family. Thanks for everything you do for us. Love you pops ❤️”