I must disagree about Daniel Day Lewis, he's an excellent actor imo.
On the other hand, I couldn't agree more about Braveheart. While the movie was very well acted and entertaining, for historical purposes it was a ridiculous mess. For the way they treated Robert the Bruce, I'm surprised the movie wasn't banned in Scotland. When I read that Randall Wallace wrote the film, thought he must have been somehow related to William Wallace, although apparently not. I believe the character the beautiful Sophie Marceau played, Princess Isabella, was only about 3 years old and still a child in France, not getting banged by Wallace in a medieval tent after warning him of Longshanks' betrayals. William Wallace was a big Man, something like 6'5", Mel Gibson is closer to 5'9" tall, Wallace's sword was damn near as long as Gibson is tall, at 5'4". So much was historically off in this film, they made a mockery of even the phrase 'artistic license'. Imagining Gibson as William Wallace is a bit like imagining Danny DeVito as a twin to Arnold Schwarzenegger.