Daniel Day-Lewis makes acting return after eight-year retirement

Daniel Day-Lewis has returned to acting after an eight-year retirement –in a film directed by his son.

The three-time Oscar winner announced he would no longer work in Hollywood after starring in Paul Thomas Anderson’s 2017 film Phantom Thread.

But he has returned for the new family drama Anemone, and takes centre stage in a new image ahead of the family drama’s New York Film Festival premiere next month.

The English actor, 68, has co-written Anemone with his son, Ronan Day-Lewis, who is also the director of the project.

An image of Day-Lewis in the woods looking up into the sky with co-star Sean Bean has been released by Focus Features.

Anemone explores themes of “fraught” relationships between fathers and sons, and brothers with a “mysterious, complicated past”.

Set in Manchester in the north of England, an official description of the movie calls it “an absorbing family drama about lives undone by seemingly irreconcilable legacies of political and personal violence.”

It follows Bean as a middle-aged man who “sets out from his suburban home on a journey into the woods, where he reconnects with his estranged hermit brother (Day-Lewis).

Samantha Morton, How to Have Sex actor Samuel Bottomley and Safia Oakley-Green, known for her work in the horror film Out of Darkness, will also star in supporting roles.

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Day-Lewis confirmed he would be returning to acting in September 2024, when his son’s project was first announced.

In 2017, the star’s team said, three months before the release of Phantom Thread: “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.”

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The reasons behind his decision remained a mystery.

The actor is one of the most widely respected actors of his generation, and has been awarded numerous accolades throughout his career. The Oscar winner picked up trophies for his roles as Christy Brown in My Left Foot (1989), an oil tycoon in epic historical drama There Will Be Blood (2007) and Abraham Lincoln in Steven Spielberg’s 2012 movie Lincoln.