Daniel Day-Lewis: I made a fool of myself over retirement U-turn

Daniel Day-Lewis has discussed his decision to come out of acting retirement.

Daniel Day-Lewis thinks he made a “fool” of himself by announcing his retirement.

The 68-year-old actor confirmed his retirement from the movie business back in 2017, before recently reversing his decision to star in Anemone, the first film directed by his son, Ronan Day-Lewis.

Daniel – who co-wrote the script with his son – said at the New York Film Festival: “I made a f****** fool of myself by announcing that I was going to stop working, and probably a bigger fool of myself coming back.

“But to deny myself the possibility of working with Ronan just to stand on my pride, I think that would’ve been probably a worse decision than just, well, I said that, so I’m sticking to it.”

Despite this, the Oscar-winning star admitted that he’s never felt truly comfortable working in the movie business.

Daniel suggested that he struggles to cope with the pressures of fame and success.

He explained: “I had long periods where I thought I’m not well suited. The work was always very precious to me — it was like food and drink. But I think I have it in common with a lot of actors, that I’m very ill suited for the life around it … the public aspect of it.”

Daniel is widely recognised as one of the best actors of his generation, but he’s always been “ill at ease with the public aspect of the life”.

He said: “We seem to be begging for attention just by virtue of the fact we’re doing that work, but it never really occurs to you that you can’t switch that attention off at will.

“I was always ill at ease with the public aspect of the life. I thought I’d get used to it and I never really did. And so it left me wondering if I wasn’t just better off keeping out of it.”

Daniel announced his acting retirement back in 2017.

He said at the time: “I need to believe in the value of what I’m doing. The work can seem vital, irresistible, even. And if an audience believes it, that should be good enough for me. But, lately, it isn’t.”