Hollywood icon Daniel Day-Lewis has recently opened up about his decision of returning to acting. The actor revealed that it comes from a place of enduring passion, stating he "never, ever stopped loving the work."
The three-time Academy Award winner is known for his roles in Jim Sheridan’s My Left Foot, Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood, and Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln. He had stepped away from the screen after his 2017 performance in Phantom Thread. Now after eight years, Daniel will be headlining Anemone, a film which will mark the directorial debut of his son, Ronan Day-Lewis. In an interview with a magazine, the 68-year-old actor reflected on the bittersweet timing. He admitted to feeling a "residual sadness" that his son was beginning his filmmaking journey while he was "walking away from that."
He elaborated on the decision to collaborate on Anemone, "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?'" Also addressing the reasons behind his hiatus, Daniel clarified that his pause wasn’t due to waning passion but rather fear. "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."
After completing Phantom Thread, he felt creatively spent. This led him to prompting his previous announcement of retirement. His representative at the time stated, "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."
Looking back at how things turned out, Daniel admitted he may have overstated things, "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. And so I think I was at such a low ebb, I thought."
Anemone, has been co-written by Ronan and his father. The film will explore family drama and "lives undone by seemingly irreconcilable legacies of political and personal violence." It is set in Northern England, and the story follows a middle-aged man, played by Sean Bean. He will venture into the woods to reconnect with his estranged hermit brother, portrayed by Day-Lewis. "Bonded by a mysterious, complicated past, the men share a fraught, if occasionally tender relationship one that was forever altered by shattering events decades earlier," reads the official logline.
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