Not since Leicester rapper Mark Morrison’s ‘Return of the Mack’ has there been a comeback to rival Daniel Day-Lewis’s decision to come out of retirement. The I actor has officially stepped in front of the camera for the first time since 2017’s Phantom Thread.
The actor isn’t the first to reverse an end-of-career announcement. Audrey Hepburn, Cameron Diaz, Jim Carrey (who came back to do Sonic The Hedgehog) and Rick Moranis have all officially declared retirement only to step back onto a set and into the limelight (Gene Hackman is still AWOL. So is Jack Nicholson but he never made a formal announcement).
The film that has lured Day-Lewis out of retirement is Anemone, directed by his son Ronan Day-Lewis. Bankrolled by Focus Features and Brad Pitt’s production outfit Plan B, the film details, according to the official blurb, ‘the intricate relationships between fathers and sons, and brothers, and the dynamics of familial bonds’ (a quick Google reveals Anemone is a ‘a genus of flowering plants in the buttercup family Ranunculaceae,’ so make of that what you will).
Day-Lewis stars opposite Sean Bean, Samantha Morton, Samuel Bottomley (How To Have Sex) and Sherwood’s Safia Oakley-Green, but the actor has even more skin in the game, having co-written the screenplay with his son. Ronan initially took a different artistic tack to his father, being primarily a painter, presenting works in New York with an exhibition currently running in Hong Kong. Anemone is currently shooting in the only less slightly glam location of Manchester.
Of course, Day-Lewis has worked with some of the greatest filmmakers in cinema history (Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, Michael Mann, Paul Thomas Anderson). By contrast, Ronan Day-Lewis has only directed one short film The Sheep And The Wolf (his younger brother Cashel wrote the score) and one pop promo Snow And Sun for the now-defunct band Sargasso. Still, the actor has form in keeping it in the family, having been directed by wife Rebecca Miller in The Ballad Of Jack And Rose, another parent-offspring drama.
Day-Lewis’ return to the big screen is a huge cause for celebration
Day-Lewis’ retirement in 2017 came via a simple statement in industry trade paper The Hollywood Reporter: ‘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.’
The announcement didn’t come as much of a surprise. The spells between films had grown longer and longer, the actor famously taking an extended break to ply his trade as an apprentice cobbler in Florence during the 1990s (if his output wasn’t marketed as My Left Shoe, he missed a trick). Yet, post The Phantom Thread, Day-Lewis has kept completely out of the spotlight, perhaps ‘following his curiosity’ (as he discussed in 2008) or simply seeing if he could beat the Governess watching The Chase.
What there is no doubt about is that Day-Lewis’ return to the big screen is a huge cause for celebration. The winner of three Oscars for Best Actor (can you name the films?), his immersive approach, astonishing range and furious intensity has created a gallery of unforgettable characters; Christy Brown (My Left Foot – Oscar number one), Hawkeye (The Last Of The Mohicans), Newland Archer (The Age Of Innocence), Bill the Butcher (Gangs of New York), Daniel Plainview (There Will Be Blood – Oscar number two), Abraham Lincoln (Lincoln – Oscar number three) and Reynolds Woodcock (Phantom Thread).
A sublime combo of technical skill and emotional directness, he is one of the best to ever do it. Frankly, Anemone can’t come soon enough.