Novelist Rebecca Miller, the wife of Oscar-winning method actor Daniel Day-Lewis, has said that living with her intense "method actor" husband has enhanced her writing.

The 55-year-old actor is known for living and breathing the life of his film characters both on and off the set, but while many women would find waking up to an entirely different persona every morning a bit of a challenge, Miller sees the benefits.

" I think it’s helped,’ the 50-year-old novelist told the Daily Mail. ‘Writing is a lot about creating characters, inhabiting them.’

She adds that whereas filmgoers get to see the end result of her husband's work, her glimpses are ‘private, and people don’t get to see’ the creative process.

Day-Lewis lauded his wife's patience when he accepted his Best Actor Oscar last month for his portrayal of Abraham Lincoln in Steven Spielberg's historical drama.

‘Since we got married 16 years ago my wife Rebecca has lived with some very strange men,’ he said. ‘I mean they were strange as individuals and probably even stranger if taken as a group. But luckily she’s the versatile one in the family and she’s been the perfect companion to all of them.’

Miller, who is the daughter of playwright Arthur Miller, says she is accustomed to living with her husband's many personas.

'All his characters are wonderful to live with, in their own way,’ she says, adding: ‘My favourite was Abe .  .  . because he filmed away from home, and I didn’t have to live with him.’

The couple, who split their time between Ireland and New York, live with their sons, 14-year old Ronan and ten-year-old Cashel, and Day-Lewis's 17-year old son Gabriel by French actress Isabelle Adjani.

Miller's latest novel, 'Jacob's Folly,' was published last week in the US. It is about an 18th Century Parisian Jewish merchant reincarnated into a housefly in modern-day New York.