Daniel Day-Lewis and Ronan Day-Lewis: Father-and-son filmmakers on making "Anemone"

He has been called the greatest actor of his generation – a three-time Oscar-winner, and reluctant star. "The work itself has always been, has remained nothing but a source of fascination and pleasure to me, the work itself," said Daniel Day-Lewis. "The aftermath of the work has always been difficult for me. You know, you become to some extent a sales rep for that work. And I'm not good at that. I never was. And I'm still not. And that particular part of it, the public part of it, has always left me feeling emptied out."

And eight years ago, he announced his retirement. But now, a clarification: "I think that was a mistake," he said. "I think it just created a kind of confusion. At the time, I never intended to retire from anything. I chose to stop doing one kind of work so that I could perhaps concentrate on a different kind of work."

It was part musical interlude: "My youngest son, Cashel, is a fiddle player. And once the idea took root in my head, like, 'I wonder if I could make him a fiddle,' that was the — you know, things tend to, yeah, it's hard to let go of a thing."

He made three, and he says he has the makings of a fourth, "but I just haven't got down to it yet."

Day-Lewis admits he was surprised to feel a strong impulse to return to acting: "And largely it was in response to the knowledge that Ronan would be making films."

Twenty-seven-year-old middle son Ronan Day-Lewis brings credentials and expectations: His mother, filmmaker and author Rebecca Miller, and grandfather, playwright Arthur Miller.

I asked Ronan, "Was your move to film a surprise to your parents?"

"Not really, because I started making little movies with my friends when I was, like, seven," he replied. "When I was really young, I would always be the one kind of annoyingly trying to corral everyone into making a little movie on our dad's, like, flip camera in the backyard or something."

"Anemone" is his directorial debut, co-written with his father, who plays Ray Stoker. The story unfolds in a remote cabin. Ronan said, "The first kind of concrete anchor, I think, was the idea of this man who's kind of in this form of self-exile, that he's living in the middle of nowhere. For some reason that pertains to his past, he's kind of separated himself and banished himself to this isolated place."

After twenty years, his brother (played by Sean Bean) arrives to bring Ray Stoker back to the son he's never met. Daniel said, "I felt I knew Ray fairly early on in the writing process. I don't know why I did. I just did. I can't explain it."

To watch a trailer for "Anemone" click on the video player below:

Daniel Day-Lewis is legendary for his immersive preparation – as a fashion designer ("Phantom Thread"), in the boxing ring ("The Boxer"), in a wheelchair ("My Left Foot"). But after more than 20 film roles, one character remains elusive: Daniel Day-Lewis.

I asked what drives him to such perfection.

"I've resisted analysis to a large extent because, maybe out of superstition, I thought it might interfere with the impulse, which was strong in me and still is," Daniel replied. "But I mean, put on the spot I'd say it's got something to do with that period of time which was very bleak in my life when I was sent away to school."

His mother, actress Jill Balcon, came from a prominent British film family. His father, Cecil Day-Lewis, who died when Daniel was 15, was well-known in literary circles – perhaps not so well-known at home.

"It's not that we never got to see him," said Daniel. "He was a good man. But my only conversations that I remember having with him [was] when I was in trouble, which I was frequently for all kinds of different things. That's my memory of it. It may be a distorted memory."

In 1968, his father was named poet laureate of the United Kingdom, and Daniel was sent to boarding school at 11. "I felt like I was at sea," he said. "I had no friends. I was being bullied. I was scrappy, but in that place you're considered to be, like, just outrageously uncivilized if you took a swipe at someone, which I did now and then."

Despite pleading, he was left to tough it out: "It was my father's decision. He believed I should stay there, and that I would feel a sense of defeat if I left. But I don't think, because he didn't really see me, he didn't understand the degree to which I was already defeated."

And yet, boarding school is where he found his life's work. "I did a few little bits and pieces in school plays," he said. "And it wasn't the magic of the theater for me; it was the alternative world, where everything around me seemed fairly dark. That was a place that was illuminated for me."

But stardom came with a darker side, as he was forewarned by the head of a prestigious summer theater program for teens 50 years ago. "He launched into a kind of cautionary tale about the world of professional acting and the theater, about the sleaze and the corruption, and I was really quite naïve at that time. But something about what he said that day stayed with me. I never wondered about the work, but I began to wonder about the world that I was going into. And so, I did reach a crossroads where I wondered whether perhaps I'd become a cabinet maker, a furniture maker, instead."

He seems to have found a comfortable place at the crossroad in "Anemone": a reluctant father on film, and devoted father off-camera.

"Anemone" is the culmination of a yearslong father-son collaboration.

I asked Ronan about the trust and confidence implied in that collaboration. "Yeah, yeah, he never implied that that was a big deal," he replied. "But I always felt that incredible sense of pressure, not wanting to let him down. I felt that actually probably more deeply than the kind of external pressure of how the film might be received, or the expectations that come with his, you know, comeback."

An unexpected return eagerly awaited. Yet, Daniel Day-Lewis is muted in his expectations: "We don't last long. Film sometimes can have a long life, and I suppose you can't help hoping that something of your work will be significant to a person in times to come. But there's, yeah, no guarantee of that."

WEB EXCLUSIVE: Extended interview - Daniel Day-Lewis and Ronan Day-Lewis (Video)

For more info:

• "Anemone" (Focus Features) is now playing in theaters

Story produced by Kay Lim. Editor: Lauren Barnello.