Bardem was great in No Country for Old Men, but you can make anyone methodical and meticulous enough to be a likeable character who's crazed and vicious. Oft times, it's more up to the director showing the actor doing something really cool and shocking than it is the actor just making the character.
Now Daniel Day Lewis on the other hand is one of those guys you can barely recognize from part to part because his method skills are so damn amazing. When I first saw a preview for There Will Be Blood, I thought he was just gonna be a Bill The Butcher knock-off. But Daniel Plainview turned out to be an image and personality in and of himself.
Personally, if I looked like Daniel Day Lewis, I'd turn myself into Plainview all the time. I liked the character for all the reasons everyone hated him. I'm a little confused as to why he did all the things he did at the end of the movie; considering his self-control beforehand, it was a little non-sequitur for him to do that to his son. I know they were running over two hours at that point, but they really needed to explain exactly what made him so deranged. I think they were trying to say it was because he stopped working and just handled the books from then on, but I can't say for sure because they just refused to elaborate.
Anyway, I could care less about Oscars and Emmys and the Academy but if anyone deserves an award, it's Lewis.
