Shadowing Practice: Daniel Day-Lewis - 'Movies 101' Part 2 - Learn English Speaking with Video

You described to us how you met Jim Sheridan.

Now this was the beginning of a real collaboration between you and Jim Sheridan.

And to me it seems to be also parallel in your life with a real affection for things Irish, for people Irish, for the culture Irish.

Do you think that that began with the relationship with Jim Sheridan?

Or do you think that your interest in Jim Sheridan and your interest in that story, and In the Name of the Father and the Boxer, part of your trilogy of Irish films,

Do you think that they came out of what was there already?

Well as much as I love Jim Sheridan and as Much as he has been a great influence in my life.

I couldn't really give him the credit

For that too it was really the other way around

because my father I suppose I was probably four years old when I first

Went with my father with my family to to the west of Ireland

He wasn't from the West actually was from from County Leash

which had been called Queens County in the old days and And from an early age, we began to think of it as being a place that was,

if not home, certainly as close to home and perhaps something almost better than home, which was a sanctuary, a place that you could escape to and always find what you were looking for,

a certain quietude.

And I grew up in England, and I mean, I am by culture and education an Englishman, and I've never tried to deny it,

but I suppose in some sense, and I might share this with a lot of people that work in the performing arts,

I felt a sense of alienation within my own society.

And something about the nature of the class system there appalled me, as it had done my parents too.

And Ireland always beckoned throughout the years, and I was fairly confident that at some time I would move over there.

Your dad was a successful writer of detective stories and also a poet,

but your grandfather started in the film industry when it was silent, 1922.

And for 40 years, Michael Balkin, later Sir Michael Balkin, literally dominated the industry.

He created Ealing Studios, where all those spectacular black and white films came from.

When you were a little boy, Anyway, was that where you were introduced to the movies through your grandfather?

I wasn't really introduced to movies, Richard.

I mean, I didn't know what my grandfather did until I was quite a bit older.

When I discovered the Ealing Commodays,

it was quite a revelation to me because my grandfather had long since retired from the business,

and I grew very close to him after my father died and grew very, very fond of him.

But as a young kid,

he was quite an intimidating character and I don't remember ever having many conversations with him. But really,

I suppose the theater was more of an influence through my

mother who had started out her life as an actress and when she married my father, she more or less put that to one side,

but still occasionally did things.

And it was, and her father, my grandfather, was appalled when she became an actress.

I mean, he thought it was the next thing to becoming a hooker as far as he was concerned.

It was that, you know, it was an absolutely unacceptable.

You're going on the stage.

My daughter was going on the stage.

I know, it was outrageous.

Well, that caused a storm in the house.

But it was through my mom that I began to meet a few people.

And we lived, I watched from the top window of our house as they rebuilt from the ground up a cinema

that had been bombed during the war.

And they built it into a theater, which is now the Greenwich Theater.

And my mother always sort of made it clear to anyone

that was working at the theater that the house was open to them

if they wanted to just come and relax and spend a bit of time there.

And I got to meet some lovely people during that time.

One of the things I read that you wrote a long time ago is you said, as a youngster, I rather liked actors because I found them to be generous and warm-hearted people.

Well, now you know actors.

Do you still think that that's true?

Yes, I do.

You do?

Yes, I do.

Do you remember when you said to your folks, I think this is the career I've chosen.

I think I want to go into theater.

I want to be an actor.

I think I kind of kept it to myself for a while.

I think it was more of a kind of private decision I made when I was around 12.

But it seemed to be a decision made out of necessity, because at that time I was just really a layabout

and the only time I ever really used energy it more

or less got me into trouble some kind or another and

and like many people the theater seemed a forgiving trade

and my first boarding school that I was sent to

which was absolutely unforgiving in pretty much every respect all the reprobates congregated in the art room not

because we were artists

because there was just this tiny little corridor of of of liberty of some kind in that place and so

um it began there strangely in this hugely restrictive environment where the world seemed pretty bleak

because a boarding school is your world whatever lies outside of

it is eclipsed by the by by the the day-to-day horror

and i was struggling i mean i was really struggling to keep my head above water

so so the theater seemed you know without knowing anything about it the The theater seemed to be the life for me.

Excuse me.

And I had one moment, I suppose you could call it, as people often talk about defining moments, and mine would seem to have an unpromising orator

which was that I was given a bit part in a production of Cry the Beloved Country.

Does that play mean anything to you?

It's set in South Africa.

Yeah, it was a play about the horrors of apartheid.

That's exactly right, yeah got it um

and i was cast as a little black boy

because of course woe betide that there should be any black children in this school

or if they were they were hidden away in some in the east wing

or something and so i had to and i had a little tiny little t-shirt and a pair of skimpy shorts,

and that meant that I had to cover my body in makeup and my face and wear a little wig.

And the thing that I really loved about this, for that two hours a night,

you walked onto a place that was flooded with light in an otherwise dark world

and it was as simple as

that even from the very beginning working in the theater I understood certain things about myself

and again I'm very grateful for that because it's not it's not invariably true

that you understand what it is that you need is an early stage

because there's so much you're impelled to do so many things that go against the grain very often.

It's you know it's gonna be a tough life

and from my point of view I assumed I was gonna have a life in the theatre

because very few English actors at that time were getting a chance in movies.

Much as I loved films it never really occurred to me that that would be a part of my life.

We all really thought we were gonna work in the theatre

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and maybe do a bit of TV to pay the bills

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now and then so

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and the theater world is very different you know the theater

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world is not it's you know you may I suppose gain some recognition

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but it's just not it's not in the say you know

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what I'm talking about it's not to the same degree you go out

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and you play to 800 people right 900 yeah night here a movie goes out

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and you're that big to most of them as well If they've got the cheat sheets, you're like, you need binoculars to see who you are.

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So, you know, and that was my early years spent working in the theater.

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I knew that the capacity to do this work was something that was a delicate thing.

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Whatever it was at one's very core that led one to do this work,

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I knew that it was not indestructible and that if I kept putting myself in situations that made me uneasy,

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which could be doing work that i didn't believe in even when i didn't have a choice in the matter

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or having to hulk myself around even auditions this sounds like horribly arrogant

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but open auditions i did a couple of those for the rsc

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and the national where you sit in a room with 50 other

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miserable actors working on a piece of shakespeare and then you walk into a room with seven

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men all puffed up with self-importance and you know you strut around

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and they they look at you like a specimen of some kind.

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And I went up.

What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.

Shadowing Practice: Daniel Day-Lewis - 'Movies 101' Part 2 - Learn English Speaking with Video

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What is the Shadowing Technique?