Daniel Day-Lewis Opens Up About Ending His Acting Retirement: “I Never Stopped Loving the Work”

After eight years away from the screen, Daniel Day-Lewis is officially stepping back into acting. The legendary three-time Oscar winner will star in Anemone, a film he co-wrote with his son Ronan Day-Lewis, who also directs.

The project marks the end of a self-imposed retirement that began after Paul Thomas Anderson’s Phantom Thread in 2017. At the time, Day-Lewis’ spokesperson announced, “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.”

It wasn’t the first time he had stepped away. In the late ’90s, Day-Lewis famously moved to Italy to become a shoemaker after The Boxer, only to return a few years later to take on his iconic role as Bill the Butcher in Martin Scorsese’s Gangs of New York.

Speaking with Rolling Stone ahead of Anemone’s world premiere at the New York Film Festival, Day-Lewis explained what drew him back this time:

“I had some residual sadness because I knew Ronan was going to go on to make films, and I was walking away from that. I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be lovely if we could do something together and find a way of maybe containing it, so that it didn’t necessarily have to be something that required all the paraphernalia of a big production?’”

In Anemone, Day-Lewis plays a recluse living in the woods of Northern England whose solitude is disrupted when his brother, played by Sean Bean, arrives and forces him to confront his past. The cast also includes Samuel Bottomley, Safia Oakley-Green, and Samantha Morton.

Day-Lewis admitted he almost stayed behind the camera, unsure about re-entering the industry. “It was just kind of a low-level fear, [an] anxiety about re-engaging with the business of filmmaking,” he said. “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.

“There’s something about that process that left me feeling hollowed out at the end of it. I mean, I was well acquainted with 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 [making Phantom Thread] that I began to feel quite strongly that maybe there wouldn’t be that regeneration anymore. That I just probably should just keep away from it, because I didn’t have anything else to offer.”

But Ronan made the choice clear. “Then son Ronan made it pretty clear that he wasn’t going to do it if I didn’t do it.”

Looking back on his “retirement,” Day-Lewis reflected, “But looking back on it now — I would have done well to just keep my mouth shut, for sure. 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. I never, you know… 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. …

“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.”

Anemone will debut in select theaters October 3 before expanding nationwide October 10 through Focus Features.