Daniel Day-Lewis is stepping out of retirement seven years after his last role to star in a movie directed by his son, Ronan Day-Lewis.
The new project, titled “Anemone,” was officially announced on Tuesday by Focus Features and Plan B Entertainment, which are co-producing the film.
“Anemone” will be Ronan’s first full-length film, featuring his father alongside British actors Sean Bean and Samantha Morton. The movie’s script was jointly written by Ronan and his father.
Earlier on Tuesday, Daniel Day-Lewis and Bean were spotted riding a motorbike through the streets of Manchester, England, fueling speculation about his return to the big screen. The 67-year-old actor had previously retired from acting following his role in Paul Thomas Anderson’s 2017 film “Phantom Thread.”
It wasn’t the first time the 3-times Oscar winner took a leave from acting. In 1997—then in his early 40s—Day-Lewis retreated to Florence, Italy, to study and work with a master shoe-maker. It wasn’t until 2002 that he returned to the silver screen to play the lead in Martin Scorsese’s “Gangs of New York,” his second film with the legendary director after 1993’s “Age of Innocence.”
“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,” then 60-year-old Day-Lewis told W Magazine in 2017. “It was something I had to do.”
Since then, the actor has maintained a low profile and rarely appeared in public. However, in January, he made a surprise appearance at the National Board of Review Awards to present a prize to Martin Scorsese.
Currently in production, “Anemone” is described as a film that delves into “the intricate relationships between fathers, sons, and brothers, and the complexities of family bonds.”
Ronan, 26, is a painter whose work has been showcased in New York and Los Angeles. His first international solo exhibition launched on Wednesday in Hong Kong.
Ronan’s work as a filmmaker includes a trilogy of videos for a Philip Glass album and an album video for David Chalmin in 2021, who is also the composer for “Anemone.”
He also won the Best Independent Short award at the IFS Film Festival in 2018 for his short film “The Sheep and the Wolf.”
“We could not be more excited to partner with a brilliant visual artist in Ronan Day-Lewis on his first feature film alongside Daniel Day-Lewis as his creative collaborator,” Peter Kujawski, chair of Focus Features, said in a press release.
“They have written a truly exceptional script, and we look forward to bringing their shared vision to audiences alongside the team at Plan B.”
Plan B, officially Plan B Entertainment, is a production company co-founded by industry stars Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston in 2001.
Focus Features, a subsidiary of Universal Pictures, established in 2002, is an acclaimed film production company focused on distributing independent and foreign films in the United States.
The Associated Press contributed to this article.