Daniel Day-Lewis returns: The actor ends his retirement to star in his son’s film

My Left Foot (1989), There Will Be Blood (2007) and Lincoln (2012): with his performances in these three movies, Daniel Day-Lewis became the only actor to win an Oscar in the best actor category on three occasions. Jack Nicholson has the same number of Oscars, but one of them — for Terms of Endearment (1983) — is for Best Supporting Actor. But in 2017, at the age of 60, Daniel Day-Lewis announced his retirement. The statement, sent by his representative to Variety magazine, was brief and to the point: “Daniel Day-Lewis will no longer be working as an actor. 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.” And then he disappeared.

Now Variety has announced that he is ending his retirement. The Irish actor has decided to get in front of the camera, at least once more, to star in a movie directed by his son Ronan Day-Lewis. According to Variety, the film, titled Anemore, is co-written by the actor and his son, and is described as an exploration of the intricate relationships between parents, children and siblings, as well as the “dynamics of familial bonds.”

Daniel Day-Lewis will lead the cast alongside Sean Bean, Samantha Morton, Samuel Bottomley and Safia Oakley-Green. “We could not be more excited to partner with a brilliant visual artist in Ronan Day-Lewis on his first feature film alongside Daniel Day-Lewis as his creative collaborator,” Peter Kujawski, the chairman of Focus Films — which is producing the movie, alongside Plan B —said in a statement. “They have written a truly exceptional script, and we look forward to bringing their shared vision to audiences.” On October 1, PageSix published photos of Day-Lewis with Sean Bean on a shoot in the streets of Manchester, England.

This will be the actor’s first appearance in a film since the 2017 movie Phantom Thread, directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. Since then, Daniel Day-Lewis has kept away from Hollywood’s spotlight, which never seemed to appeal to him, and his Greta-Garbo lifestyle has been a bit of a mystery, only occasionally sparking media interest. “I knew it was uncharacteristic to put out a statement,” he told W magazine in 2017. “But I did want to draw a line. I didn’t want to get sucked back into another project. All my life, I’ve mouthed off about how I should stop acting, and I don’t know why it was different this time, but the impulse to quit took root in me, and that became a compulsion. It was something I had to do.”

Back in 1990, after collecting his first Oscar for My Left Foot, he took a two-year break, during which he bought a property in a small town in County Wicklow, popularly known as the Garden of Ireland. The mountains of this region are also no stranger to cinema, serving as the setting for movies such as Braveheart and The Count of Monte Cristo. Even at the height of his career, Day-Lewis’ main home was Wicklow, despite his long stays in the United States. Ever since moving, he has maintained a strong connection with the local community.

The actor said this himself when he was given the key to the county in 2009 for his involvement in various charitable causes. “This is the place that sustains me. It’s the place where I’ve planted myself,” said Day-Lewis, who was the first person to receive this honor, in his acceptance speech. “It is to this place that I return to as a refuge, a place where I might restore myself.” The actor added that life in the county gave him ”the freedom to lie fallow if I need to.”

This was also confirmed by his neighbors, who occasionally saw him in the Roundwood Inn bar, enjoying a pint of Guinness. In statements to the Irish Independent, they described him as “a gentleman.” “But usually we leave him to it, that’s why he likes it here,” summed up one local. “He’s a lovely man, he would always stop and say hello and have a word for you,” added the owner of a local shop. “He would come in the odd time for a paper and that,” revealed the owner of the grocery store Justine’s. “But he’s a very private man.”

Day-Lewis does not live by himself in Wicklow; he shares his life with his wife, the director and screenwriter Rebecca Miller, daughter of the playwright Arthur Miller and the photographer Inge Morath. The couple married in 1996 and have two children together, Ronan Day-Lewis, 26, and Cashel Blake Day-Lewis. The actor is also the father of Gabriel-Kane Day-Lewis, the fruit of his relationship with French actress Isabelle Adjani, with whom he was with between 1989 and 1995.

At 67, Day-Lewis has made a few public appearances, but they have always been related either to his own family (in 2023 he attended the premiere of the film She Came To Me, directed by his wife) or to his friends. In January 2024, he attended the tribute to director Martin Scorsese at the National Board of Review Awards. “I was a teenager when I discovered Martin’s work,” he said. “With a light of his own making, he illuminated unknown worlds that pulsed with a dangerous, irresistible energy — worlds that were mysterious to me and utterly enthralling.”

Day-Lewis and Scorsese worked together on two feature films, The Age of Innocence in 1993 and Gangs of New York in 2002: “One of the greatest joys and most unexpected privileges of my life was to find myself one day working with him,” said the actor.

Little else has been known about his life during his seven-year hiatus. In the spring of 2023, People magazine reported that he had been spotted in New York City, walking with crutches. Neither the actor nor his representatives provided any further details about what had happened. In the new photos taken during the shoot, the actor appears in top form.

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