For a brief moment earlier this year, three-time Oscar winner Daniel Day-Lewis came out of retirement and reunited with his Gangs of New York director Martin Scorsese at an awards night.

Presenting the best director award for Killers of the Flower Moon at the National Board of Review Awards in New York in January, Day-Lewis said working with the director was “one of the greatest joys and unexpected privileges of my life”.

Scorsese returned the compliment, and smiled to a packed gala ballroom that “we did two films together and it’s one of the greatest experiences of my life”.

“Maybe there’s time for one more. Maybe! He’s the best.”

Family ties

Whether or not Scorsese had inside word, Day-Lewis, 67, has now officially come out of retirement after seven years and is set to star in a film directed by his 26-year-old artist son, Ronan Day-Lewis.

Anemone, [the dictionary meaning is types of small plant, wild or grown in gardens, with red, blue, or white flowers] is co-written by the father-and-son duo and in pre-production.

Co-starring Game of Thrones‘ Sean Bean and The Whale’s Samantha Morton, the film is described as exploring “the intricate relationships between fathers, sons and brothers, and the dynamics of familial bonds”.

Back in 2017, after making Paul Thomas Anderson’s film, Phantom Thread, London-born Day-Lewis said he was out of the game.

“I did want to draw a line. I didn’t want to get sucked back into another project,” he told W Magazine later that year.

“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.”

Extended breaks

Right back to his days in the theatre in the UK,  he would take extended breaks, “blue periods and times of decompression that prompted Jim Sheridan, the director of My Left Foot and two other Day-Lewis films, to remark that “Daniel hates acting”, the magazine wrote.

“But after a break, he would be seduced anew by a fascinating character, a compelling story, an exciting director”.

Looks like that director is indeed his son, Ronan, who has pivoted from painting to a filmmaking debut.

Sally Field and Daniel Day-Lewis in Lincoln. Photo: AAP

What has DDL been doing?

Day-Lewis scored his breakthrough role in Sunday Bloody Sunday, playing a teenage delinquent, before landing supporting roles in The Bounty, then My Beautiful Laundrette and A Room with a View.

His performance as Christy Brown in My Left Foot won him numerous awards, including his first Academy Award for best actor.

Working as a cobbler in Florence before Gangs of New York, he reunited with Scorsese on The Age of Innocence in 1993 and teamed with Sheridan again for In the Name of the Father.

Known for his dedication to method acting, Day-Lewis won a total of three best actor Oscars, playing oil man Daniel Plainview in There Will Be Blood and Abraham Lincoln in Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln.

Married to US-born Rebecca Miller – daughter of the famous playwright Arthur Miller – since 1996, they are parents to three sons, Lewis’ son from another relationship, Gabriel-Kane Day-Lewis, as well as the two children they share, Cashel Blake Day-Lewis and Ronan Day-Lewis, People reported.

Miller, 62, has written and directed seven feature films and is a published author.

Rarely seen

As for what he’s killed time doing away from studio sets, Sheridan says he regularly talks to him, and as recently as March he says Day-Lewis was still “done” with acting.

“He opens up the streamers and there’s 7000 choices, none of them are good. Film has been moved out of the public domain into a private domain – you have a remote, you can stop it,” he told Screen Daily.

“It’s not the same experience. It’d be great to see Daniel coming back and doing something because he’s so good.”

He’s rarely been seen in public, and “spotted on rare occasions” in New York City last year (including once on crutches), according to People. 

Meanwhile, as Ronan prepares to launch his first international solo exhibition – his style is punk romanticism – in Hong Kong on October 2 after a successful stint in New York, the  father and son are busy collaborating on Anemone.

Looking unrecognisable with a greying handlebar moustache, Day-Lewis and Bean (reportedly playing a former soldier) were spotted riding a retro Honda Africa Twin motorbike through Manchester, England on September 29.

Set in the 1980s, the Manchester Evening News reported seeing several vintage cars lining surrounding streets, with filming also done in nearby Warrington.