Daniel Day-Lewis Quits Acting

3-time Oscar winning actor Daniel Day-Lewis has announced via his publicist that he will quit acting following the release of his next film, an untitled Paul Thomas Anderson project.

Day-Lewis, who has been nominated for a further 2 Oscars during his career, is one of the most successful actors in Academy Awards history and boasts a plethora of critically successful portrayals across 4 decades.

Leslee Dart, Day-Lewis’ publicist, released the following statement:

“Daniel Day-Lewis will no longer be working as an actor. 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.”

Now 60, Day-Lewis has been central to films directed by talents as highly regarded as Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, Michael Mann, Jim Sheridan and Stephen Frears, as well as the above mentioned Paul Thomas Anderson with whom he worked on There Will Be Blood (2007).

From left to right: Lincoln; In the Name of the Father, There Will Be Blood, Gangs of New York, My Left Foot.

The next project between Day-Lewis and Thomas Anderson is set for a December 25th 2017 release date and is widely believed to be titled Phantom Thread, despite there being no official confirmation of this from production companies Annapurna Pictures and Focus Features. The movie is about a fashion designer who caters to high society in the 1950s and is expected to be a major player during awards season.

Daniel Day-Lewis is no stranger to announcements such as this, as the actor “semi-retired” from acting in the late-90s only to be coerced back into cinema by Martin Scorsese for Gangs of New York, a movie for which he was nominated for Best Supporting Actor at the 2003 Academy Awards. He also famously retired from stage acting in 1989 after abandoning a performance of Hamlet less than half-way into the evening’s show.

Rising to prominence within the world of cinema as a part of famed LGBTQ+ movie My Beautiful Laundrette, Day-Lewis has developed a reputation for fully immersing himself within the characters he chooses to play, something we may never see again once he quits the industry in the latter part of this year.

Source: THR

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