Daniel Day-Lewis is a veteran soldier-turned-recluse in ‘Anemone’
Daniel Day-Lewis and Sean Bean play estranged brothers in the feverish family drama “Anemone,” which is directed by Ronan Day-Lewis.
Daniel Day-Lewis is warily stepping back into the spotlight.
The “Age of Innocence” star has a towering new role in “Anemone” (in select theaters Oct. 3, nationwide Oct. 10), his first new project since 2017’s “Phantom Thread,” after which he announced he was quitting acting.
Daniel, 68, has long valued privacy for both himself and his family, which became an increasing struggle at the height of his fame in the 1990s and early 2000s. He has two children with his wife, filmmaker Rebecca Miller: Ronan, 27, and Cashel, 23.
“When we moved to New York, it got a bit more complicated,” the London native recalls. “There were times when I was out with the boys when they were very, very young, and we’d be followed in the streets and I don’t take kindly to that. I never found a way of dealing with that in a civilized manner. I don’t know how you’re meant to.”
Daniel has frequently taken lengthy breaks between projects, and even went into “semi-retirement” in the late 1990s to pursue shoemaking in Italy. Now, the actor spends most of his time at home in rural Ireland, where his family doesn’t have to contend with constant media attention or paparazzi.
“It’s a quiet place,” he says. “The nearest small town is about five or six miles away. People in those rural areas, they take you as they find you, and they just allow you to be who you are. If you’re accepted in the community, they just let you get on with your life and you do the same for them.”
Daniel also has an older son, Gabriel-Kane, 30, with ex-partner Isabelle Adjani. As a kid, Ronan remembers his mom and dad trying to make life as normal as possible for him and his siblings.
“They were very protective of me and my brothers, in terms of how much we were exposed to the public eye,” Ronan says. “I feel like I was very naive about that for a long time. But eventually, it started coming from other kids at school who saw ‘Last of the Mohicans’ and their parents talked to them about my dad’s films. That was probably the first awareness I had of the mythic place my dad held.”
The older he got, the more attuned he became to his father’s three-time Oscar-winning pedigree.
“I remember one time we’d gone to some screening of ‘My Left Foot’ and walking out on the street, and all these people just screaming his name,” Ronan says. “I was like, ‘Oh, wow.’ That was my first time directly coming into contact with his fame. It was terrifying, but it was also kind of fascinating.”