Dillon Freasier

It says much for Dillon Freasier's performance opposite Oscar winner Daniel Day-Lewis in "There Will Be Blood" that Kenneth Turan, the respected critic of the "Los Angeles Times," reckoned that only he and Paul Dano (as twins Paul and Eli Sunday) "have the ability to hold the screen against him." However, the 10 year-old nearly missed out on the opportunity to play the young H.W., who is adopted by prospector Daniel Plainview in the epic adaptation of Upton Sinclair's 1927 novel, "Oil!" While searching near the film's location in Marfa, Texas for a youngster with an outdoors background, casting director Cassandra Kulukundis spotted Freasier at his school. However, having already nearly been given a speeding ticket by the boy's traffic cop mother, Regina, she was keen to make a good impression and acceded to the request to send one of Day-Lewis's movies so Regina had a better idea of who her son was going to spend so much time with. Unfortunately, the office sent Martin Scorsese's 2002 period drama "Gangs of New York," in which Day-Lewis played the vicious Bill the Butcher and she was so shocked that a copy of the same director's refined 1993 adaptation of Edith Wharton's "The Age of Innocence" was hurriedly dispatched to show the star in a better light. The pair evidently bonded, however, as Day-Lewis proclaimed during his acceptance speech: "I wish my son and my partner H.W. Plainview were up here with me, the mighty Dillon Freasier."