Daniel Day-Lewis announces retirement from acting

The Oscar-winning actor’s spokeswoman has confirmed that his next film, reuniting with There Will Be Blood director Paul Thomas Anderson, will be his last

Daniel Day-Lewis in 2016. The actor has announced his retirement.
Daniel Day-Lewis in 2016. The actor has announced his retirement. Photograph: Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images

Daniel Day-Lewis announces retirement from acting

The Oscar-winning actor’s spokeswoman has confirmed that his next film, reuniting with There Will Be Blood director Paul Thomas Anderson, will be his last

Daniel Day-Lewis is to retire from acting, according to his spokeswoman.

The 60-year-old British actor, who has won three Oscars, will make his final screen appearance in Phantom Thread, a fashion drama that reunites him with Paul Thomas Anderson, director of There Will Be Blood.

“Daniel Day-Lewis will no longer be working as an actor,” a statement to Variety from his spokeswoman Leslee Dart read. “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.”

The star has previously taken extended breaks from the industry, including a late-90s stint as an apprentice shoemaker in Florence. “My life as it is away from the movie set is a life where I follow my curiosity just as avidly as when I am working,” he said in a 2008 interview with the Observer. “It is with a very positive sense that I keep away from the work for a while. It has always seemed natural to me that that, in turn, should help me in the work that I do.”

After breaking out in 1985 drama My Beautiful Laundrette, Day-Lewis won his first Oscar for his role as an artist with cerebral palsy in My Left Foot. The 90s saw him work with Martin Scorsese in The Age of Innocence, Michael Mann in Last of the Mohicans and again with the My Left Foot director Jim Sheridan, in In the Name of the Father and The Boxer.

Day-Lewis in My Beautiful Laundrette 1985
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Day-Lewis in My Beautiful Laundrette 1985 Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo

The following decade, he worked with Scorsese again in Gangs of New York and won two further best actor Oscars for There Will Be Blood and Lincoln. His final film, Phantom Thread, released this Christmas, is set in London’s fashion scene in the 50s. He will play a dressmaker catering to high society.

Day-Lewis has three children with his wife, Rebecca Miller, who directed him in the 2005 drama The Ballad of Jack and Rose.