Daniel DayLewis says he 'never intended to retire,' should have kept his 'mouth shut' Wesley StenzelSeptember 11, 2025 at 5:34 AM 3 Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Daniel DayLewis at the 2024 National Board of Review Awards GalaKey points Daniel DayLewis said in a new interview that he "never intended to ...
- - Daniel Day-Lewis says he 'never intended to retire,' should have kept his 'mouth shut'
Wesley StenzelSeptember 11, 2025 at 5:34 AM
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Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty
Daniel Day-Lewis at the 2024 National Board of Review Awards GalaKey points -
Daniel Day-Lewis said in a new interview that he "never intended to retire" from acting.
In hindsight, the three-time Oscar winner thinks he "would have done well to just keep my mouth shut."
Day-Lewis who last acted in 2017's Phantom Thread, is returning to the screen next month with Anemone.
It turns out Daniel Day-Lewis never really wanted to stop acting.
Eight years after announcing his retirement, the three-time Oscar winner is returning to the silver screen in his son's film Anemone, and he recently reflected on the journey in an interview with Rolling Stone.
"Looking back on it now — I would have done well to just keep my mouth shut, for sure," Day-Lewis said. "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."
Laurie Sparham/Focus Features
Daniel Day-Lewis as Reynolds Woodcock in 'Phantom Thread'
Day-Lewis, 68, most recently appeared in 2017's Phantom Thread, which reunited him with There Will Be Blood filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson. The actor announced his retirement in a statement via his representative that same year.
Shortly after that initial announcement, the notoriously private Day-Lewis claimed that he issued that statement in order to make the decision more definite. "I knew it was uncharacteristic to put out a statement," he told W magazine. "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."
Now Day-Lewis is clarifying that he never fell out of love with acting, but feared that future film roles would take a heavy toll on him.
"The work was always something I loved. I never, ever stopped loving the work," he told Rolling Stone. "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."
Day-Lewis said that while shooting Phantom Thread, he began to wonder if he could ever again handle the intense process that he undergoes for each film role. "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," he recalled. "That I just probably should just keep away from it, because I didn't have anything else to offer."
The Age of Innocence star said he hoped to weaponize his pride in order to prevent himself from taking more film roles. "I'm a very proud person, and not in a good way," he reflected. "I have a lot of pride, and I thought, 'If I draw a line under this, I'll be too proud to go back on that. Because I know there'll come a day when I'll be tempted again. But if I've said I'm not doing this, I won't do it.' This just shows I'm not as proud as I like to think I am!"
Courtesy of Focus Features
Sean Bean as Jem and Daniel Day-Lewis as Ray in 'Anemone'
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Day-Lewis ended his eight-year hiatus to star in Anemone, the directorial debut of his 27-year-old son, Ronan. "I had some residual sadness because I knew Ronan was going to go on to make films, and I was walking away from that," the actor mused. "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."
The Lincoln star said that collaborating with his son was reinvigorating. "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," he explained. "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 hits theaters Oct. 3.
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