Oscar award winning Daniel Day-Lewis feels most at home in his beloved Wicklow

The life he leads in the little village he calls his refuge

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Daniel Day-Lewis and his wife Rebecca Miller on the red carpet at the 2013 Oscar Awards

Photo by Getty

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He’s the greatest actor in the world after winning a record third Best Actor Oscar but to the people in a small village in County Wicklow he’s just a local lad made good.

Daniel Day-Lewis resides on a farm near the tiny Wicklow hamlet of Annamoe and  returns there after conquering the world.He has been living there for over seventeen years.

Before winning the Oscar he said he would spend five years without working on a movie, living in his Wicklow home.

"This is the place that sustains me, the place where I planted myself."

"When the work is done, it's to this place that I return to as a refuge," he said when he was made a Freeman of Wicklow in 2010.

"It's a place where I feel the freedom to lie fallow if I need to for a period of time.

"Living in this place that I have now for 15 years I've always felt, more than any other place that I've been, that Wicklow is in harmony, complete harmony, with the demands that life has made," he said.

Read more: ‘‘Lincoln’’ star Daniel Day-Lewis becomes first actor to win three Oscars

"The truth is I don't notice [the pressure of celebrity] around here because I'm allowed to live. I notice it elsewhere.”

His home, a 100 acre farm where he has a beautiful Georgian mansion is so isolated that locals do not see him for weeks or even months. They will occasionally glimpse him riding through the bleak mountains on his push bike.

Even more occasionally, when riding one of his motor bikes, he will stop into the local Roundwood Inn pub and sip a pint of Guinness while keeping to himself.

One fellow drinker told The Daily Mail, "He'll come in a couple of times a week and just sit alone at the bar with a pint of Guinness.

"He's always very pleasant and will pass the time of day, but he likes to be pretty much left alone.

"To be honest, I don't think too many of the locals actually realise who he is because he keeps such a low profile.

"He seems embarrassed when he is recognised and obviously has a bit of a problem with fame. Most people understand that and leave him in peace."

"Daniel is already fretting about having to go to the Oscars. He hates all the razzmatazz and standing around on the red carpet.

Read More: Daniel Day-Lewis, Steven Spielberg hit Dublin for ‘Lincoln’ premiere

"He can't stand the attention."

Parents whose kids attend the same school as his sons say he is a deeply involved parent who keeps to himself but never pulls the star routine at parent teacher meetings.

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