Daniel Day-Lewis goes 'Eastwooding' with Invisible Obama

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Published on November 8, 2012 05:43PM EST

Ddl Chair — Photo: Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images

Someone write a comedy for Daniel Day-Lewis! (Paging P.T. Anderson?) The Oscar heavyweight best known for digging deep into his characters’ souls had some fun at the expense of Clint Eastwood at last night’s Brittania Awards in Beverly Hills.

After his Lincoln director Steven Spielberg had presented him with the Stanley Kubrick Award for Excellence in Film and the audience rose to honor him, he was joined onstage by a seemingly empty chair. “I have to say that I’m so extremely grateful and glad that — taking time out of his very busy schedule — the recently re-elected president of this country was able to make it here tonight.”

The audience loudly expressed their amusement, as Day-Lewis continued to address Invisible Obama. “I know as an Englishman it’s absolutely none of my business, but I’m just so very grateful that it was you.”

Watch it below.

The Lincoln star insisted he meant no disrespect to Eastwood, who famously encountered a foul-mouthed Invisible Obama at the Republican National Convention. “I love Eastwood, this is no satirical comment on him or his politics,” Day-Lewis said. “But I have to say when I saw him talking to a chair in front of a room full of strangers, I thought, I’ve got to try that. I mean, that’s a challenge.”

Later, Day-Lewis got another huge laugh when he admitted that he felt overlooked by the British media, at least in terms of being illegally monitored by News Corp. “I feel like the odd man out,” he said. “I may be the only British subject not to have my phone hacked. I don’t know where Rupert’s boys were when I came stumbling out of the S&M bar on old Kent road with a saddle strapped to my back and a Mussolini costume under it.”