Or, if not that, to a place where he risks losing his sense of himself. When the cloak that allowed you to observe is slipped from you, then the most useful and indeed fascinating tool of your work is taken with it."Another way of putting it would be that Day-Lewis is one of those actors who needs to pursue the roots of his characters, sometimes to the point of danger. And I do bitterly resent that it's not always possible now, because I'm the object of scrutiny. After all, this was the man who told Time magazine, early in 1994, that: "I love to sit and watch people I love to sit and listen to people. There were even allegations that for some of the time Day-Lewis was under medical care, that he was hardly looking after himself in normal ways.But there was also the possibility that something vitally creative in Day-Lewis felt inhibited by his sheer success and celebrity. Did he want to be close to them, or far away? Other reports claimed a developing friendship with the actress Julia Roberts. Then there was the much-publicised fact that the French actress Isabelle Adjani was having his child.

Some say that Day-Lewis had become a nomad, wandering around Europe, sometimes on a motor cycle, sometimes not, living rough, camping out, trying to lose himself or become invisible. The Crucible, I fear, is less intriguing than the many stories about what Day-Lewis has been doing in the last three years.There are rumours and reports enough to make an extraordinary movie or novel about an actor whose faith in his own craft snaps. He is at the crux of a dilemma, to be sure, but more as an angle in a theorem then as some force of human nature. Worse than that, as far as Day-Lewis is concerned, Proctor is not a profound role. But Arthur Miller's play (which he has himself adapted for the screen) seems obvious, high-minded and too allegorical for its own good. There is a true feeling for the raw, hysterical mood of 17th-century New England. Thus there has been an interval of three years between Gerry Conlon and his John Proctor in Nicholas Hytner's film of The Crucible This is, in some ways, a disappointing return Hytner has done his job with great care.

It was impossible to think of any other actor who could have covered that range with such unquestioned authority.Nothing was announced, and likely nothing was planned, but after In the Name of the Father, Daniel Day-Lewis simply withdrew from the world in which he was a master. Within months of opening as Gerry Conlon - the aimless kid who becomes a man of principle and resolve because he is framed - Day-Lewis had played Newland Archer, the subtle yet imprisoned New York lawyer of the 1870s in The Age of Innocence (1993). In other words, I have a hunch he'd have been better than Fiennes in any of those three films. Such speculation is not the only way of measuring Day-Lewis Three years ago, he was a furious worker. Whereas Day-Lewis can be a great tyrant of the light, an inescapable actor who colours the atmosphere around him.