Daniel Day-Lewis, pulled out of retirement by his son, finds his acting fire still burns

By JAKE COYLE NEW YORK AP It s been eight years since Daniel Day-Lewis disclosed his retirement from acting and revealed he longed to explore the world in a different way Related Articles Steve review Cillian Murphy impresses in uneven kinetic drama The Road Between Us finds heroism amid Oct horrors The Smashing Machine satisfying new take on sports movies Why various young adults turn on TV or movie subtitles according to a new poll Matthew McConaughey back in driver s seat in The Lost Bus But the big-screen absence of the actor numerous would peg as the greatest one alive ends with Anemone a new film directed by his son Ronan Day-Lewis The two of them wrote it together What began as something small with no real ambition grew until a full feature film and Day-Lewis long-awaited return to movies It saddened me that I had perhaps ruled myself out of that when I decided to work on something else for a while Day-Lewis declared in an interview alongside his son As we progressed through it and it seemed less and less doable to contain it like two fellas in a shed it began to alarm me slightly I understood that this was going to involve the full paraphernalia of a film production and that wasn t something I was eager to get back into But we just kept moving forward to see what would happen he added And this is what happened Anemone which of late premiered at the New York Film Festival and which Focus Features releases Friday in theaters finds Day-Lewis now not even slightly less intense or magnetic a performer It s a father-son story though not an autobiographical one Day-Lewis stars as Ray Stoker a solitary hermit living in a remote cabin His brother Jem Sean Bean arrives and tries to convince him to return to his teenage son This image published by Focus Features shows Sean Bean left and Daniel Day-Lewis in a scene from Anemone Focus Features via AP Since s Phantom Thread Day-Lewis has among other things studied violin making in Boston But he has also come to think of his declaration of retirement as a mistake or not quite what he intended At least it wasn t enough to stand in the way of him making a movie with his son I know it s been imagined on my behalf by numerous commentators people that don t know me that somehow the way I work has left me so debilitated I can barely open my eyes in the morning This then requires a period of five or six years recovery Day-Lewis says That was never the scenario The work itself was perpetually nourishing to me Yet after making Phantom Thread Paul Thomas Anderson s London-set portrait of a perfectionist couturier Day-Lewis was uncertain that he would ever regenerate the appetite to tackle another role I definitely was brought low after I finished shooting Phantom Thread more than for any other reason because I anticipated being back in the constituents arena again he says And this is where I find myself now And it s something I never ascertained a approach to from the day I started doing this work until now The constituents aspect of my life I ve invariably been baffled by The spotlight and a stark reminder The majority of meaningful gesture Day-Lewis is offering his son might not be making a movie with him but returning to the spotlight for it At the New York Film Festival Day-Lewis has been a happy humble presence calling himself a fool for his professed retirement and dutifully accepting a glare of attention that he s largely avoided for the last decade It s been a stark reminder for me of Oh yeah that s what it s like he declared chuckling But Day-Lewis greeted a reporter warmly urging him to pull a chair a Churchill noted Day-Lewis a craftsman and furniture maker and spoke candidly and thoughtfully about the mystique that has often surrounded his work an aura he disdains Lena Christakis from left Ronan Day-Lewis Daniel Day-Lewis Rebecca Miller and Gabriel-Kane Day-Lewis attend the premiere of Anemone at Alice Tully Hall during the rd New York Film Festival Sunday Sept in New York Photo by Evan Agostini Invision AP I knew to survive in this world that that would presumably be the way I d do it by creating other worlds and escaping into them and living through them for a period of time he reported And that remains the same It never changed I love that work otherwise I wouldn t do it I don t do it as an act of self-flagellation Day-Lewis Method-acting immersion in a character has long been the stuff of legend Jim Sheridan who directed him in three films including My Left Foot once remarked Daniel hates acting But the idea that Day-Lewis somehow makes himself into a martyr for his art has long chafed with him That s something that s weighed heavily over the years this sort of misconception which has now become so ludicrous about Method acting which is a very bad name in the business now says Day-Lewis We all find a different way of approaching the same problems And when we re on the set it makes no goddamn difference what system you train under Meisner or Method or Stanislavski or whatever it might be You re just there trying to live in those moments to burn yourself up trying to find that truth as well as you can Day-Lewis has sensed specific of the same all-consuming imagination in Ronan a -year-old painter making his directorial debut He s one of two sons Day-Lewis has with his wife filmmaker Rebecca Miller He also has an older son Gabriel-Kane Day-Lewis from his past relationship with Isabelle Adjani From a young age Day-Lewis saw how invested his son was in creating imagery Ronan meanwhile grew up marveling from a distance at his father s work It perpetually held a huge amount of mystery to me what he was doing says Ronan who has vivid memories of being on set for films like There Will Be Blood and The Ballad of Jack and Rose To be inside this realm that I had invariably been watching curiously from the outside was so intriguing But there were aspects of his process that still remained a mystery to me which I think helped definitely More sardines For Day-Lewis building the character of Ray was a step-by-step process that included everything in his woodland world right down to the expired tin cans of sardines that line his shelves There were never enough sardines for me he says expressing happiness Anemone unfolds in fits and starts with several glorious improvised monologues surrounded with strikingly lush imagery by Ronan Day-Lewis so relishes pushing the boundaries of such a fictional world that once in it he tends to not want to let go Daniel Day-Lewis attends the premiere of Anemone at Alice Tully Hall during the rd New York Film Festival on Sunday Sept in New York Photo by Evan Agostini Invision AP You hope to create a world an illusion And when somebody says to you That was the last shot Go home now that was so bewildering to me because I m still invested in that world he says It s not I have trouble letting go of it The trouble I have is that I want to still splash around in that illusion Still it seems Day-Lewis has in Anemone avoided the kind of post-film feeling that followed Phantom Thread The actor hasn t yet informed a forthcoming project but he acknowledges feeling the maximum for more While he doesn t say he missed acting during the last eight years he appears to have come to various self-acceptance of its fundamental irrevocable place in his life It has been my primary form of self-expression for my entire life since I was a child he says And therefore I don t know if I experience it as a sense of missing if I m not doing it But the need to express myself in that way even at a subterranean level that is still there But just as it s time to go Day-Lewis offers an appendix to his answer If Anemone has left him still hungry for more that fact is owed partly to the nature of its making Not just that it was done with Ronan but that they made it themselves It s Day-Lewis first screenwriting credit And that s a thoroughly new experience for me he says I never really dared attempt to write before so it s a new thing You can begin with absolutely nothing and the hunger can grow out of that