Daniel Day-Lewis in 'The Last of the Mohicans'. Photo by Everett Collections.
Survivalist
2. To play the frontiersman Hawkeye in Michael Mann's "The Last of the Mohicans" (1992), Day-Lewis lived as an 18th-century American Indian might. While spending days at a time in the Alabama wilderness, Day-Lewis learned how to track, hunt, and skin animals. He learned how to build canoes, huck a tomahawk, and shoot his trusty flintlock rifle, an accessory that became his constant companion -- even during Christmas dinner, reportedly. "If he didn't shoot it, he didn't eat it," Mann told Time magazine.