Oscar-winning actor Daniel Day-Lewis has said he “never intended to retire” and “would have done well to just keep [his] mouth shut”.
In an interview with Rolling Stone magazine, Day-Lewis was speaking about his return to acting after an eight-year break in Anemone, a film directed by his son Ronan Day-Lewis. “It just seems like such grandiose gibberish to talk about. I never intended to retire, really. I just stopped doing that particular type of work so I could do some other work.”
He added: “Apparently, I’ve been accused of retiring twice now. I never meant to retire from anything! I just wanted to work on something else for a while.”
Day-Lewis announced his retirement from acting in 2017 after the release of Phantom Thread, a film directed by Paul Thomas Anderson in which he played a dress designer. In a statement at the time his representative said: “Daniel Day-Lewis will no longer be working as an actor … This is a private decision and neither he nor his representatives will make any further comment on this subject.”
Day-Lewis previously “retired” from film acting between completing The Boxer (1997) and starring in Martin Scorsese’s Gangs of New York (2002) – part of which time he reportedly spent working as an apprentice for celebrated Italian shoemaker Stefano Bemer. In 1989, he appeared to quit stage acting permanently while performing as Hamlet at the National Theatre in London.
Daniel Day-Lewis in 2017’s Phantom Thread, which he said ‘left me feeling hollowed out’. Photograph: Focus Features/Allstar
However, the prospect of working with his son on a film project appears to have spurred him to return. Day-Lewis said: “As I get older, it just takes me longer and longer to find my way back to the place where the furnace is burning again. But working with Ro, that furnace just lit up. And it was, from beginning to end, just pure joy to spend that time together with him.”
He added: “It was just kind of a low-level fear, [an] anxiety about re-engaging with the business of film-making. The work was always something I loved. I never, ever stopped loving the work. But there were aspects of the way of life that went with it that I’d never come to terms with – from the day I started out to today.”
Day-Lewis has won a record three Oscars for best actor, for My Left Foot, There Will Be Blood and Lincoln, and was nominated for three further times, for In the Name of the Father, Gangs of New York and Phantom Thread. Anemone is due to receive its world premiere at the New York film festival in September.
Referring to Phantom Thread, Day-Lewis said: “There’s something about [the acting] process that left me feeling hollowed out at the end of it … I understood that it was all part of the process, and that there would be a regeneration eventually. And it was only really in the last experience [of making Phantom Thread] that I began to feel quite strongly that maybe there wouldn’t be that regeneration any more. That I just probably should just keep away from it, because I didn’t have anything else to offer.”
“But looking back on it now – I would have done well to just keep my mouth shut.”