Daniel Day-Lewis Speaks After Announcing He’s Retiring From Acting
Fans were flabbergasted when Daniel Day-Lewis announced he was retiring from acting earlier this year. And in a recent interview with W, the actor is speaking out about it, as well as his final film Phantom Thread.
“Before making the film, I didn’t know I was going to stop acting,” he said. “I do know that Paul [Thomas Anderson] and I laughed a lot before we made the movie. And then we stopped laughing because we were both overwhelmed by a sense of sadness. That took us by surprise: We didn’t realize what we had given birth to. It was hard to live with. And still is.”
“I knew it was uncharacteristic to put out a statement,” he said of his retirement announcement. “But I did want to draw a line. I didn’t want to get sucked back into another project. 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.”