Queen’s Honours: Day-Lewis receives knighthood


Triple Oscar-winning actor Daniel Day-Lewis has been made a knight in the Queen’s Birthday Honours.

The Lincoln star joins Wolf Hall novelist Hilary Mantel and fashion designer Zandra Rhodes, who are both made dames.

Dame Maggie Smith becomes a Companion of Honour. The actress joins 65 individuals recognised for “services of national importance”.

American actress Angelina Jolie is being awarded an honorary damehood.

Her work to end sexual violence around the world sees her featured on the Diplomatic Service and Overseas Birthday 2014 Honours list, for exceptional service to Britain overseas.

Pianist Andras Schiff receives a knighthood for services to music, while Homeland star Damian Lewis is made an OBE.

Also on the list – released to mark the Queen’s official birthday – are Beatles biographer Hunter Davies and singer and DJ Cerys Matthews.

Writer Davies is made an OBE alongside composer Talvin Singh and actress Phyllida Law, mother to actresses Emma and Sophie Thompson.

There are MBEs for BBC 6 Music host Matthews, journalist and children’s book specialist Julia Eccleshare and Torchwood star John Barrowman.

David Lan, artistic director at the Young Vic, becomes a CBE.

Dame Maggie Smith
Occupation: Actress
Honour: Companion of Honour, for services to drama

For more than six decades, Dame Maggie has honed her talents across the stage, TV and cinema, consistently winning numerous awards.

She is probably best known for early works, such as the titular role in The Pride of Miss Jean Brodie in 1969, for which she won a best actress Oscar.

A second supporting actress Oscar came in 1978 for California Suite.

Other accolades include five Baftas, three Emmys, three Golden Globes, three Screen Actors Guild Awards and a Tony Award.

She was made a dame in 1990 for services to the performing arts.

Smith currently stars as Violet Crawley, Dowager Countess of Grantham, in ITV’s hit drama series Downton Abbey.

It was recently announced she will star in a film version of Alan Bennett’s play The Lady in the Van – a role she played on stage in 1999.

Daniel Day-Lewis
Occupation: Actor
Honour: Knighthood
Daniel Day-Lewis said he was “entirely amazed and utterly delighted in equal measure” to receive the honour.

He is known for being one of the UK’s most intense and talented actors and is highly selective with his roles.

The 57-year-old puts a huge amount of preparation into his characters and often remains in character for the duration of a film’s shoot.

In 2013, he made Oscar history by becoming the first man to win the best actor award three times.

The son of poet Cecil Day-Lewis and actress Jill Balcon, he won his first Academy Award in 1990 for My Left Foot, his second in 2008 for There Will Be Blood and his third last year, as President Abraham Lincoln.

He captured the public’s attention with his roles in 1985 in My Beautiful Laundrette and A Room with a View, and establishing himself as a leading man in The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988).

He has won further accolades for his work in In The Name of the Father, The Age of Innocence and Gangs of New York.

The actor, who has both British and Irish citizenship, has not appeared in a role on stage since he dramatically withdrew from the National Theatre production of Hamlet in 1992, citing exhaustion.

Hilary Mantel
Occupation: Novelist
Honour: Damehood, for services to literature

In 2012, Hilary Mantel became the first woman and the first living British author to win the Man Booker prize twice for her historical novels Wolf Hall and Bring up the Bodies.

The two novels, which follow the rise of Thomas Cromwell from blacksmith’s son to Henry VIII’s right-hand man, also marked out Mantel as the first person to win the Booker prize for a direct sequel.

Mantel, who is working on the last part of the trilogy, The Mirror and the Light, said she was “delighted” with the honour.

“It’s given for ‘services to literature’ but I see it not so much as a reward for the past, more as encouragement for the future. It means a great deal to have my efforts recognised, especially as I feel I’ve come to a new phase in my creative life.

“I hope it will please the many people who have helped, guided and encouraged me over a writing career of some 30 years.”

Derbyshire-born Mantel wrote her first novel – Every Day is Mother’s Day – in 1985. She has written a further 11 books on subjects as diverse as Saudi Arabia, the French Revolution and a tormented medium in 2005’s Beyond Black.

She was made a CBE in 2006, but it was not until 2009’s Wolf Hall that Mantel became a household name.

An Royal Shakespeare Company adaptation of the first two books is playing in London’s West End, while a BBC adaptation of Wolf Hall is due next year.

Andras Schiff
Occupation: Pianist
Honour: Knighthood, for services to music
Schiff has been hailed as the greatest musician Hungary has produced since the composers Bela Bartok and Zoltan Kodaly.

Born in Budapest, he studied music in his hometown and latterly London, where he was a finalist at the Leeds International Piano Competition in 1975.

He emigrated in 1979, becoming a British citizen in 2001.

Alongside his brilliance as a pianist, he has a reputation as one of the great musical thinkers. His lectures on Beethoven’s 32 piano sonatas remain a central tenet of music broadcasting.

Recent awards include the Royal Philharmonic Society Gold Medal in December 2013.

Zandra Rhodes
Occupation: Fashion designer
Honour: Damehood, for services to British fashion and textiles

Rhodes is instantly recognisable by her pink hair, dramatic make-up and iconic jewellery.

Once dubbed the Princess of Punk, her early outfits and bold textiles were initially spurned by the conservative British public.

She found a foothold in New York in the late 1960s when Diana Vreeland featured her garments in American Vogue, and gradually made her mark on the British market – going on to be named Designer of the Year in 1972

The late Diana, Princess of Wales, Elizabeth Taylor and Freddie Mercury have all worn her clothes. Kylie Minogue, Dame Helen Mirren and Naomi Campbell are among her current fans.

In recent years, she has diversified into set and costume design for opera, and founded the London Fashion and Textile Museum in 2003.

She was made a CBE in 1997.
Angelina Jolie
Occupation: Actress, director and campaigner

Honour: Honorary damehood, for services to UK foreign policy and the campaign to end war zone sexual violence

Oscar-winning actress Jolie, who topped the UK and US box office earlier this month in Disney’s Maleficent, is also special envoy for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.

In May 2012 she co-founded the Preventing Sexual Violence Initiative (PSVI) with William Hague and is described as having made an “exceptional contribution”.

“To receive an honour related to foreign policy means a great deal to me, as it is what I wish to dedicate my working life to,” said Jolie.

“Working on the Preventing Sexual Violence Initiative and with survivors of rape is an honour in itself. I know that succeeding in our goals will take a lifetime, and I am dedicated to it for all of mine.”

Jolie – who has six children with partner Brad Pitt – told BBC Breakfast last month that a life-changing trip to Sierra Leone around the time she starred in 2001’s Lara Croft: Tomb Raider kick-started her humanitarian work.

“I realised how sheltered I’d been and how fortunate I was and I felt horrible for ever having been self-destructive or self-pitying… I just felt a responsibility to be a better person.”

Last year the 38-year-old revealed she had chosen to have a double mastectomy after discovering she had an 86% chance of developing breast cancer.

Jolie, whose mother fought cancer for nearly a decade, has since said she is “very happy” with her decision and plans to have further surgery to reduce the risk of ovarian cancer in the near future.

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