PLAYING THEIR SONG WHEN DANIEL DAY-LEWIS CAME ON BOARD REBECCA MILLER'S 'THE BALLAD OF JACK AND ROSE,' THE FILM BECAME A TRUE FAMILY AFFAIR.

Byline: Glenn Whipp Film Writer

Three winters ago, Daniel Day-Lewis came out of hiding to promote Martin Scorsese's ``Gangs of New York,'' and newspapers and magazines were rife with stories of Day-Lewis' aversion to acting, his rumored apprenticeship with an Italian cobbler and other odd stories about the Method Man many consider to be the world's greatest actor.

At that time, Day-Lewis was espousing what he calls his ``see you later, alligator'' approach to working. In other words: Enjoy him in ``Gangs.'' He won't be back anytime soon.

Then, shortly before the 2002 Oscars, where he was nominated for his ferocious turn as Bill the Butcher in ``Gangs,'' Day-Lewis shocked everyone by announcing he'd be going back to work. He'd be making a movie with his wife, Rebecca Miller. She is the daughter of photographer Inge Morath and playwright Arthur Miller (who died last month at the age of 89) and is an accomplished director in her own right (``Personal Velocity'').

This was big news for a man who likens approaching a film role to confronting the ``dreaded beast.''

``Well, the beast in this case had quite a velvety nose,'' Day-Lewis says, laughing, looking lovingly at Miller during a recent interview.

Day-Lewis met Miller in 1995 while preparing to make a movie version of Arthur Miller's ``The Crucible.'' They married the following year. At the time they met, Miller had already written a first draft of the movie that was to become their current project, ``The Ballad of Jack and Rose.'' She showed it to Day-Lewis then and has given it to him to read numerous times in the intervening years.

``She's very respectful because we'd talked about it a few times and we'd hedged our bets and I'd steered a course around it a couple of times, not because it was any less compelling at that time, but because I didn't feel ready in those moments to take the thing on,'' Day-Lewis says. ``So she was reluctant on this final occasion to even put it to me, I think.''

``Which was sweet,'' he continues, ``but I think she didn't want to put me in the awkward position of having to reassess this thing that I'd read so many (bleeping) times. I've read that script more than any script I'll ever read in my life over the years, but it was always a pleasure to do it.''

When you see ``The Ballad of Jack and Rose,'' it's easy to understand both Day-Lewis' reluctance to take on the project and Miller's ambivalence about showing it to him. The movie is a father-daughter story about a '60s-era idealist facing both the ticking clock of his own mortality and his adolescent daughter's sexual awakening. Jack must confront what Miller calls a ``quagmire of guilt'' over his intense feelings for Rose, which flirt with being incestuous.

Day-Lewis, 47, doesn't just take on characters. He becomes them. (Says Camilla Bell, the young actress who plays Rose: ``When I arrived on set, he was already Jack. He knew everything about him. He definitely sucks you into that energy.'') That's why Miller never thought he'd play a tortured soul like Jack and was as surprised as anybody when he agreed to take the role.

``I picked you,'' she says sweetly to her husband. ``And you picked me.''

``I think what happened on this occasion,'' Day-Lewis explains after giving the matter much consideration, ``is that I sensed quite strongly that urge, that compulsion begin to unleash itself in me and I immediately recoiled a little bit because, of course, then I began to think about the implications of us working together and how that could practically work and whether it would put demands on us that were unfair and on the kids.'' (The couple has two sons, Ronan, 6, and Cashel, 2; the family has homes in Connecticut and Ireland.)

Day-Lewis calls these moments of trepidation, which he feels before beginning any movie, ``my little blanket.'' But with ``Jack and Rose,'' he knew that the demands that the role would put on him (and vice versa) would become demands on his wife as well.

Imagine his surprise, then, that the whole experience went amazingly well. (``It couldn't have been easier,'' he says.) Miller, 42, shot the film on Prince Edward Island, off the east coast of Canada. It was the summer of 2003, a beautiful time, and the couple's boys played on the beach every day while mom and dad worked. Day-Lewis and Miller would steal away from the set a few times a day to play with the children.

``It was good for the whole family,'' Miller says. ``The boys also got a little more independent in a good way.'' Any parent of young children knows where she's coming from.

``It's funny, that thing about taking risks,'' Day-Lewis says, ``because you so rarely get punished for taking a risk. More often than not, the thing you think is the risk isn't the risk at all because it's in the nature of things that we conjure up these images of what might await us. And of course, it's not that thing at all. It might be something worse in a different way'' - and here Day-Lewis, a man easily given to laughter, chuckles - ``but it's rarely the thing that we think.''

Day-Lewis and Miller have a lovely rapport, listening with marked pleasure and interest as the other speaks, warmly gazing into each other's eyes, laughing appreciatively at the other's jokes. They make a striking pair - he's 6-foot-2; she must be 5-10 - and a conversation with them includes little of the glad-handing and insincerity typical of celebrity couple encounters. They possess grace in spades.

At one point, Day-Lewis jokes about the unruly beard he had at the time of this interview, saying he grew it out of a ``lifetime habit of trying to frighten my mother.''

Miller: ``I think this time you've finally done it.''

Day-Lewis: ``She actually strangely didn't mind when she saw it. It deflated me.'' He laughs uproariously. ``No, no ... I'm just saying that.''

Only once does Miller become evasive. When asked whether the movie's father-daughter conflicts over control and dominance (conflicts that were also present in an episode of her last film, ``Personal Velocity'') were issues she had to work through with her famous father, Miller speaks in generalities.

Day-Lewis listens and then offers, ``I think it was survive or die in your household.'' He laughs. ``Survive or perish.''

``Yes,'' Miller says. ``I was definitely a survivor, yeah.''

Miller is currently writing a screenplay adaptation of her father's first play, ``The Man Who Had All the Luck.'' Day-Lewis is hoping to work again in June, though the project - a studio film, budgeted somewhere between ``Gangs of New York'' and ``Jack and Rose'' (``now that's a gap,'' he jokes) - hasn't been finalized, so he reluctantly won't identify it.

``Whatever else it is, it won't be Prince Edward Island,'' he says, looking wistfully at his wife. ``Working with Rebecca, it was just entirely a sense of trust. She gave me the safe environment to reveal myself, which is all you want as an actor. Because, of course, there's always the danger that every step of the way you might simply be a fool. And that's part of the work. That's something you have to learn quicker than anything else - that it's OK to be a complete buffoon.''

Day-Lewis stops himself with laughter. ``It's not an easy lesson to learn, and it's not one that doesn't come back to haunt you sometimes. Searching for that part of yourself that you need to reveal, that core, you can ride pretty close to the point of absurdity as well, so you've got to understand that making a (bleeping) idiot of yourself is OK. It's not a deadly disease after all.''

Glenn Whipp, [phone]

glenn.whipp(at)dailynews.com

Dylan's the one for this 'Ballad'

Given that one of its leading characters is a fierce '60s idealist, it's no accident that ``The Ballad of Jack and Rose'' prominently features the music of Bob Dylan.

Filmmaker Rebecca Miller and her husband, Daniel Day-Lewis (who plays the aforementioned fallen utopian), were afforded complete access to Dylan's catalog by the singer's music publisher. In the end, three Dylan songs were used in the film: ``Boots of Spanish Leather,'' ``One More Cup of Coffee (Valley Below)'' and ``Shooting Star.''

``Perfect, perfect lyrics,'' Day-Lewis says. ``In each case, it was like they were written for the movie.''

The couple's connection to Dylan runs much deeper than the film. Their youngest son, Cashel, who will be 3 in May, absolutely adores Dylan.

Says Miller: ``His favorite song is 'It's All Over Now, Baby Blue.' Also, 'Don't Think Twice, It's All Right.' He calls that 'The Rooster Song.' He always says, 'Sing me ``The Rooster Song.'' If I sing, 'When your rooster crows,' he'll sing, 'At the bweak of dawn.' I just sang it to him today. It's funny. He just really responds to Bob Dylan. He loves that voice. It really speaks to him.''

``And that's how I feel,'' Miller adds. ``He just reaches out and says something to me.''

Day-Lewis chimes in: ``His connections, too, in a lot of those early songs make those wonderfully imaginative leaps the way a child's imagination might do. I look at Cashel's response and think, 'There's hope for the future yet.' ''

- G.W.

CAPTION(S):

4 photos, box

Photo:

(1 -- cover -- color) For Daniel Day-Lewis, `The Ballard of Jack and Rose' was a Labor fo Love

(2) no caption (scene from ``The Ballad of Jack and Rose'')

(3) Director Rebecca Miller on the set of ``The Ballard of Jack and Rose.''

(4) BOB DYLAN

Box:

Dylan's the one for this `Ballad' (see text)