In "My Left Foot", the actor Daniel Day-Lewis won acclaim for his performance of a man with cerebral palsy.
 John Hartoch, Day-Lewis's acting teacher at Bristol Old Vic theatre school, said of his former pupil's achievement:Although we have quite an impressive alumni  everyone from Jeremy Irons to Patrick Stewart  I suppose he is now probably the best known, and we're very proud of all he's achieved
In 2008, when he received the Academy Award for Best Actor from Helen Mirren (who was on presenting duty having won the previous year's Best Actress Oscar for portraying Queen Elizabeth II in The Queen), Day-Lewis knelt before her, and she tapped him on each shoulder with the Oscar statuette, to which he quipped, "That's the closest I'll come to ever getting a knighthood

