Daniel Day-Lewis comes out of retirement to work with son Ronan

Three-time Oscar winner Daniel Day-Lewis has been lured out of retirement by his son, Ronan Day-Lewis.

Day-Lewis will star in Anemone, the feature debut from Ronan, 26, which father and son co-wrote. The plot and character details are being kept under wraps but the film has been described as being about the “dynamics of familial bonds” and the relationships between fathers, sons and brothers.

Anemone will be produced by Universal’s arthouse division Focus Features and production outfit Plan B, which is run by Brad Pitt, Dede Gardner and Jeremy Kleiner. It will also star Sean Bean, Samantha Morton, Safia Oakley-Green and Samuel Bottomley.

Focus Features’ chairman, Peter Kujawski, said that the Day-Lewises had written “a truly exceptional script”.

Ronan is Day-Lewis’s son with his second wife, Rebecca Miller, who is also a filmmaker. He is also a painter who has a solo exhibition touring internationally, starting in Hong Kong this month.

Day-Lewis formally retired from acting in 2017, ahead of the release of Paul Thomas Anderson film Phantom Threads.

At the time, a spokesperson confirmed, “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.”

He later told W magazine that he had put out the statement to draw a line under his career, and to hold himself accountable so he wouldn’t “be sucked back into another project.”

He added, “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.”

Day-Lewis, 67, is one of the most highly regarded actors of his generation. He was won three Oscars, for My Left Foot, There Will Be Blood and Lincoln.

He is known for immersing himself in his characters, even off-screen, and is one of the prime examples of a “method actor”.