Three time Oscar winner Daniel Day-Lewis was knighted by the Duke of Cambridge at Buckingham Palace on Friday.

The Anglo-Irish actor, who lives in Wicklow, played Irishmen in two of his most famous roles, Christy Brown the disabled writer in My Left Foot and Gerard Conlon, one of the Guildford Four, in In the Name of the Father

The actor was named a knight during the Queen’s Birthday Honour’s List in June, when he said he was “entirely amazed and utterly delighted in equal measure.”

The 57-year-old was honored for his services to drama. Day-Lewis has won the Academy Award for best actor three times.

He won his first Oscar in 1989 for his role as Dublin disabled writer Christy Brown in My Left Foot. In 2007, he won his second Oscar when he played a 20th century oilman in There Will Be Blood, and in 2012 he won his third Oscar in the title role of Abraham Lincoln. He has been nominated for the best actor Oscar five times.

Day-Lewis is known taking a method approach to his acting and immersing himself in his roles. He taught himself Czech for his (English-speaking) role as the womanizing brain surgeon in The Unbearable Lightness of Being, and for his role in The Last of the Mohicans, he learned how to build canoes. For his role as Irish artist Christy Brown in My Left Foot, he spent the entire shoot in a wheelchair and allegedly asked crew members to carry him around the set.

“All you're trying to do is lay the groundwork, which might allow the imagination to free itself,” he said.

“When the imagination frees itself, you have no goddamn idea what's going to happen. So it's not a constrictive or restrictive way of working - quite the opposite.”

Day-Lewis, who has dual British and Irish citizenship, lives in Co Wicklow, Ireland with his wife Rebecca Miller and their two sons. He is deeply involved in building a hospice there a $3 million dollar project.