Actor Daniel Day-Lewis arrives at the Oscars. Photo / Getty
Actor Daniel Day-Lewis arrives at the Oscars. Photo / Getty
As one of Britain's most acclaimed actors, Daniel Day-Lewis's decision to retire from acting was as shocking as it was baffling.
This summer, the winner of three Academy Awards for best actor astounded the film industry when he issued a statement declaring that the film Phantom Thread would be hislast.
Now, in his latest interview, the 60-year-old star has revealed how the film about London's fashion industry in the 1950s had left him "overwhelmed" with sadness.
He also reveals how shortly after announcing his retirement he was involved in a motorcycle crash that nearly caused him to lose a hand.
In the interview with W magazine, Day-Lewis said that when he started out in the film he had not expected it to be his last.
Actor Daniel Day-Lewis, winner of the Best Actor award for Lincoln and presenter Meryl Streep. Photo / Getty
Explaining how he and Paul Thomas Anderson, the director of Phantom Thread, had both been affected by it, he said: "Paul 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 realise what we had given birth to. It was hard to live with. And still is."
He explained that the statement revealing his retirement was "uncharacteristic" but a desperate attempt to "draw a line" and avoid being "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."
The star of My Left Foot and The Last of the Mohicans continued: "Do I feel better? Not yet. I have great sadness. And that's the right way to feel. How strange would it be if this was just a gleeful step into a brand-new life."
In Phantom Thread, Day-Lewis play Reynolds Woodcock, a high-society dressmaker in post-War London whose world is transformed when he falls in love.
Day-Lewis admitted that despite living in New York with his wife, Rebecca Miller, he remains essentially English, having been born in Greenwich, London, the son of Cecil Day-Lewis, a poet laureate.
"I don't know why, but suddenly I had a strong wish to tell an English story," he told W magazine. "England is deep in me. I'm made of that stuff. For a long time, a film set in England was too close to the world that I'd escaped from - drawing rooms, classic Shakespeare.
"But I was fascinated by London after the war. My parents told stories about living through the Blitz, and I felt like I ingested that. I am sentimental about that world. And my dad was very much like Reynolds Woodcock. If a poet is not self-absorbed, what else is he?"
Shortly after his announcement, he was involved in an accident while riding his motorbike in New York.
"It's a journey I've done hundreds of times. An ambulance ran a red light, and there was nothing I could do. I've avoided hundreds of accidents, and this was the one I just couldn't avoid."
The bike was crushed and he suffered a badly broken arm.
"When I was on the ground, I remember thinking that I would probably lose my hand. I thought, OK, it's my left hand, and I have another one."
However, after surgery his hand was saved. Day-Lewis has not yet seen his latest and last film, something he links to his decision to stop acting, but now wants to "explore the world in a different way".
