Daniel Day-Lewis isn’t really known for doing half measures. The man is super selective in choosing parts, and once he does, he disappears into roles. He also vanishes between films, and when he announced his retirement eight years ago after Phantom Thread, it felt final. But now he’s back with a 2025 movie release Anemone, and it’s a film he’s not only starring in but also co-wrote. He calls the return a “lovely gift,” but does that mean he’s officially done with retirement? Here’s what he had to say on the matter.
In a new feature with Empire Magazine, the Lincoln actor opens up about what pulled him back into the spotlight. And it wasn’t some long-lost dream project or a blank check from a streaming giant. It was something deeper, more personal. He explained:
It was just a lovely gift that I was given. Most particularly it being Ronan’s first film, and having been there every day with him from the beginning, that experience was unique and beautiful.
Ronan Day-Lewis, Daniel’s son and a New York-based painter and Yale-trained filmmaker, makes his directorial debut with Anemone, his first collaboration with his father. News of the project surfaced last October, revealing a personal story about estranged brothers that lured Daniel Day-Lewis out of retirement.
As you can see from the Anemone trailer, the flick follows a former British soldier (Day-Lewis) who’s estranged from his family until his brother (played by Sean Bean) comes searching for him. The film isn’t autobiographical, but, as father and son wrote it, personal themes slipped in. “Those aspects started to creep up on us,” Ronan admits. “There was a certain point where we both realised that, and started to embrace it.”
Watching his father shape-shift back into a character brought an eerie kind of magic to the process. “It was a really interesting paradox,” Ronan said. “Where it was my dad, but then also Ray, superimposed over him.”
It’s clear Anemone wasn’t just a creative endeavor—it was a deeply intimate one. And that intimacy may have re-lit a fire in the Academy Award winner that he thought he’d extinguished. Day-Lewis continued about his return to the screen:
The appetite always seems to emerge in relation to something that I’ve become fascinated with, and I believe that could very easily happen.
That’s a sharp pivot from the resolute tone he struck post-Phantom Thread, which was even touted as his “final performance, as he insisted at the time he was done with acting. Since then, he’s spent time with family, kept out of the spotlight, and went full artisan mode again—this time not cobbling shoes in Florence, but learning violin-making at the North Bennet Street School in Boston. (Because of course he did.)
So is this a comeback or a one-off? If you read between the lines, Day-Lewis is no longer talking like a man who’s “retired.” He’s talking like someone who’s waiting to be enticed by the next role. About coming back for another project, he added:
I’m certainly not going to shy away from it.
Well, there you have it. It sure sounds like the legendary performer isn’t ruling anything out. If he returns, let’s hope it doesn’t take another eight years for his “appetite” to be reignited.
Anemone will release in limited theaters on Friday, October 3, 2025. Be sure to check your local listings.