Dsniel Day-Lewis

Daniel Day-Lewis ends retirement from acting after seven years

Three-time Oscar winner to star in his son Ronan’s directorial debut, Anemone, which he also co-wrote

Sian Cain

Wednesday 2 October 2024

Three-time Oscar winner Daniel Day-Lewis is ending his retirement from acting to star in his son’s directorial debut.

The 67-year-old British actor quit acting after starring in Paul Thomas Anderson’s 2017 film Phantom Thread, and has largely stayed out of public life since.

But he is now set to star in a film titled Anemone, directed by his son Ronan Day-Lewis, US independent production company Focus Features confirmed on Tuesday.

The film will feature actors including Sean Bean, Samantha Morton, Samuel Bottomley and Safia Oakley-Green, and is currently shooting in Manchester.

Father and son wrote the screenplay, which “explores the intricate relationships between fathers, sons and brothers, and the dynamics of familial bonds”, Focus Features said.

Daniel Day-Lewis made his screen debut as a teenager in Sunday Bloody Sunday before moving on to a number of memorable period drama roles, including as Hawkeye in The Last Of The Mohicans.

He is known for his dedication to method acting, and has won three best actor Oscars, for playing disabled Irish writer Christy Brown in My Left Foot, oil man Daniel Plainview in There Will Be Blood and Abraham Lincoln in Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln.

Day-Lewis was made a knight bachelor of the British empire by the Duke of Cambridge in 2014.

In June 2017 it was announced he was retiring from acting, months before Phantom Thread was released.

“Daniel Day-Lewis will no longer be working as an actor,” the statement, issued by his representative, read.

“He is immensely grateful to all of his collaborators and audiences over the many years. This is a private decision and neither he nor his representatives will make any further comment on this subject.”

He had previously taken extended breaks from the industry, including a stint working as an apprentice shoemaker in Florence in the 1990s.

“My life as it is away from the movie set is a life where I follow my curiosity just as avidly as when I am working,” he told the Observer in 2008. “It is with a very positive sense that I keep away from the work for a while. It has always seemed natural to me that that, in turn, should help me in the work that I do.”

In January, Day-Lewis presented US film-maker Martin Scorsese with an award for his western epic Killers of the Flower Moon.

The actor, who starred in Scorsese’s Gangs Of New York and The Age Of Innocence, said working with the director was “one of the greatest joys and unexpected privileges of my life”.

THE GUARDIAN