Daniel Day-Lewis on Why Announcing Retirement Was a Mistake

Daniel Day-Lewis has said in a new interview that his 2017 announcement about retiring from acting was “such grandiose gibberish” and that he never intended to leave acting completely. Day-Lewis has twice stepped away from performing on screen in his career. The first time was in 1997, when he left his career as an actor to work as a shoemaker’s apprentice. He eventually returned to appear in Martin Scorsese’s Gangs of New York (2002). He again announced his retirement in 2017. However, he has since returned to star in Anemone, a movie helmed by his son, Ronan.

Daniel Day-Lewis says he should’ve kept his ‘mouth shut’ about retiring

Day-Lewis told Rolling Stone in a new interview that he shouldn’t have said anything about retiring in 2017. “Looking back on it now — I would have done well to just keep my mouth shut, for sure,” the Oscar winner told the outlet. “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… 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,” he added.

The last movie Day-Lewis worked on before his most recent retirement announcement was Phantom Thread, which earned him an Oscar nod in the Best Actor category. He explained to Rolling Stone that he never stopped loving acting, but “there were aspects of the way of life that went with it” that he never came to terms with throughout his career. Day-Lewis noted that this process left him experiencing a “hollowed out” feeling. He acknowledged that he knew that this was part of the process and that there would be “regeneration eventually.”

However, with Phantom Thread, Day-Lewis started to “feel quite strongly” that the above-mentioned regeneration would not happen, prompting his decision. The 68-year-old actor revealed he returned to work together with Ronan and potentially indicated that he would continue acting after Anemone.

“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,” The Lincoln actor said. “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,” he further stated.

Anemone debuts in limited theaters in the U.S. on October 3, 2025, before receiving a wider release a week later.

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