Daniel Day-Lewis is coming out fighting: 'Any time Brian Cox wants to talk... I'm easy to find'

Anemone is not the first co-creation from Daniel Day-Lewis and his son Ronan Day-Lewis. But it’s the first one they’re sharing with the world. The new film – Day-Lewis junior’s first as a director and his father’s return to acting, eight years after saying Phantom Thread would be his last film – debuted last month at London Film Festival. Now it’s in cinemas, a big moment for the pair of them.

Day-Lewis senior is as warm and welcoming in person as he can be intense and imposing on screen. Inquisitive and mischievous, funny in a way his reputation does not necessarily suggest. And he grins widely as the duo talk through a lifetime of creative play together.

“I feel like I was always trying to do some wacky project that my dad would generously help with,” says Ronan Day-Lewis, 27-year-old director and artist.

“I’m handy. I’m useful. If you need a pair of hands, I’m good at figuring out how to fix or make something,” says Daniel Day-Lewis, now 68 years old, fit as a flea and sharply dressed. Before studying at Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, he applied to work as a cabinet maker – so his passion for making goes way back. 

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Daniel Day-Lewis: “We made a book together where Ronan did all the illustrations.”

Ronan Day-Lewis: “Then you bound it with, like, a pair of swimming trunks!”

DDL: “And the spine was an old motorcycle jacket I cut up. And we made a fake Nike commercial with Ronan’s Russian tortoise, Martha. She was the starlet. We made the Swoosh and – you probably shouldn’t do this to tortoises – we sellotaped it to her shell.”

RDL: “Then there was my sculpture of a creature that had been appearing in my paintings. It needed this infrastructure cut out of foam and wood that was big and unwieldy. My dad helped me get that assembled and pour the wax over it.”

DDL: “We put down plastic sheeting but this thing was seven feet long – there was no certain way we would ever get it out.”

RDL: “Well, I designed it so that it was just wide enough to go through the door, but yeah…”

DDL: “It was a happy time, fucking hell, that mad endeavour.”

The new, grown-up project evolved into work on a serious scale. But Anemone has its roots in a desire to find new ways to play in a creative way. 

DDL: “That’s exactly right. We’ve all chosen a line of work, including his mum, brother and pretty much everyone in the family, that involves a lifetime of playing. One tends to forget that. The themes you’re playing with are often weighty and laden with difficult emotions. But there has to be that joyful element in the centre of it, which is playfulness.”

RDL: “I feel like it’s in both our natures, even if we’re working on something playful and low stakes, we take it pretty seriously. But the setting, at home on the kitchen table, was a very low-pressure environment.”

DDL: “Ronan did a typing course – how old were you when you did it, nine years old? I was astonished when I saw his fingers flying on the keys and he’s got faster and faster ever since. So he was the bookkeeper. We were working largely through improvisation, refining the language as it came out. Ronan ended up with 55 drafts of every scene then tried to find a structure amongst this jumble of ideas spilling out. We only ever worked on it when we were in the same room, because part of the joy was meant to be spending that time together.”

‘You’re in dialogue for the rest of your life with a person you can never know’

Anemone was written together, directed by Ronan, with Daniel in the lead role of Ray, an ex-British soldier still traumatised by his tour of duty in Belfast during The Troubles. He has been living in the woods for 20 years as the film begins, hunting for food, running through the woods, bathing in the river. 

The intensity Daniel Day-Lewis brings is a reminder of his unique skillset. When Sean Bean, as his estranged brother Jem, arrives, they must navigate decades of unresolved trauma. Away from the shack in the woods, Jem’s wife Nessa (Samantha Morton) and her son Brian (Samuel Bottomley) await their return.

The brotherly dialogue is harsh, the humour abrasive and the truths painful. For a film that focuses on men talking, the silences speak as loudly as the raised voices and fists. 

RDL: “Growing up with brothers gave me an intuitive understanding of the fluctuating power dynamics. And in the father-son dynamic, I understood the sense of fascination with the mystery of a parent’s past life, even though my father’s obviously really present.”

Daniel Day-Lewis has three sons, Gabriel-Kane from a previous relationship with Isabelle Adjani, and Ronan and Cashel with his wife, Rebecca Miller, also a successful filmmaker and the daughter of totemic playwright Arthur Miller. Was being present something he worked on, a philosophy of fatherhood, to be there in a way his own father – Cecil Day-Lewis, poet laureate of the UK from 1968 until his death four years later – was not?

DDL: “It might have been if I’d ever thought about it objectively because it’s in opposition to my experience growing up, where my father was a more remote figure. Then he was dead when I was still quite young. So, rather like Brian in the film, I was always chasing the mystery of that father figure, and you’re in dialogue for the rest of your life with a person you can never know. Ronan’s mum and myself tried to figure out our professional lives so that only one of us was working, and took the kids with us. Some of our happiest times were spent travelling as a family and working.”

RDL: “I remember Prince Edward Island, when they were shooting The Ballad of Jack and Rose. Seeing them create this imaginary world, building that house covered in grass, was extraordinary. And Marfa, Texas, for There Will Be Blood gave me an obsession with the desert I’ll never let go of.”

‘I have felt the need to defend myself’

Daniel Day-Lewis is one of the great actors in cinema history. A mercurial, versatile talent, he’s been at the top of the profession for 40 years, since My Beautiful Launderette and A Room with a View, both released in 1985, catapulted him into in-demand leading-man status. He beat Morgan Freeman, Tom Cruise, Kenneth Branagh and Robin Williams in the Best Actor category at the 1989 Oscars for My Left Foot; won again for There Will Be Blood in 2007 and Lincoln in 2012. Feted roles in In the Name of the Father, The Boxer, Scorsese’s Gangs of New York and finally Paul Thomas Anderson’s Phantom Thread only added to his reputation.

Daniel Day-Lewis has always taken breaks between roles. But this time was different, following what he now calls an ill-advised statement saying “Daniel Day-Lewis will no longer be working as an actor.” Myths and legends have grown, the perception of working method has been distorted, exaggerated, ridiculed even, in his absence. The fact that he is one of the best ever to do it, that his method garners tangible results, has faded beneath the noise. He has already been using the publicity drive for Anemone to defend his acting methods. But he goes further still when speaking to Big Issue. 

DDL: “I just don’t like it being misrepresented to the extent it has been. I can’t think of a single commentator who’s gobbed off about the method that has any understanding of how it works and the intention behind it. They focus on, ‘Oh, he lived in a jail cell for six months.’ Those are the least important details. In all the performing arts, people find their methods as a means to an end. It’s with the intention of freeing yourself so you present your colleagues with a living, breathing human being they can interact with. It’s very simple. So it pisses me off this whole, ‘oh, he went full method’ thing. What the fuck, you know? Because it’s invariably attached to the idea of some kind of lunacy. 

“There’s a suggestion that at its extreme it interferes with the working process of everybody else. If I’ve been guilty of that, I’ve got some apologies to make. And when I was younger, maybe? I don’t know. I hope it never did. My training was in the Stanislavski school, which suited me. I’ve no idea about Sean Bean’s schooling, I don’t need to know, because when I’m in his presence, he’s a living, breathing human and we enjoy the collision of two spirits. 

“My impression is I’ve had wonderful working relationships with my colleagues. I love everybody working to create that imagined world. It’s a game. And the way I play is to create that illusion for myself in the hope I can help other people believe it. Once you’ve gone to those lengths to create it, it makes perfect sense to stay in it. I choose to stay and splash around, rather than jump in and out or play practical jokes with whoopee cushions between takes or whatever people think is how you should behave as an actor. And I’m OK with the way I’ve gone about it. Sorry, that was a bit of a mouthful.”

Cox fighting 

One reason Day-Lewis’s method has been undermined recently were Brian Cox’s disparaging remarks about his Succession co-star Jeremy Strong. Day-Lewis has seen all of this. Of course he has. His name was dragged into every think-piece. Contrary to ideas about him, in breaks between films, whether he is taking a degree course in violin-making, making shoes or competing in cross country, Day-Lewis is also paying close attention. He may not always be acting, but he remains interested in popular culture. Though he continues to speak quietly, there’s a hint of exasperation in his voice now. 

DDL: “Listen, I worked with Brian Cox once and got somehow drawn into this handbags-at-dawn conflict inadvertently. Brian is a very fine actor who’s done extraordinary work. As a result, he’s been given a soapbox… which he shows no sign of climbing down from. Any time he wants to talk about it, I’m easy to find.

“If I thought during our work together I’d interfered with his working process, I’d be appalled. But I don’t think it was like that. So I don’t know where the fuck that came from. Jeremy Strong is a very fine actor, I don’t know how he goes about things, but I don’t feel responsible in any way for that.”

So which parts of his latest alter-ego did Day-Lewis have to live in, to inhabit, ahead of the filming? 

DDL: “Being involved in the writing and working through improvisation, I was already there. But when I’d looked at The Troubles over the years, it was always from the Catholic perspective, from West Belfast, where I used to stay in Twinbrook. So to examine that period from the point of view of a British soldier required some understanding. Other than that, I felt very much at home in Ray.”

While Ronan was editing, Day-Lewis senior was observing the impact Adolescence had on the national conversation. 

DDL: “I saw Stephen Graham a couple of days ago. He’s an old friend. What an extraordinary piece of work and wonderful that the whole country was talking about it, in parliament, the police force, in the arena of social work. That lad Owen Cooper is extraordinary. Erin Doherty is a wonderful actress. Their scenes were incredible, and the stuff in the school with throngs of hostile kids roaming around? Like, fuck, did you choreograph it all?” 

We are about to conclude. But something is still eating away at Daniel Day-Lewis. 

“There’s one thing I wanted to add referring to Brian Cox… which is that he suggested that my collapse as an actor was a result of the way I work. He doesn’t know me. He has no idea what led to my decision to stop working as an actor. And it’s nothing to do with the work itself, which I’ve always loved and has always been like food and drink to me. 

“It’s important not to jump to conclusions. Brian may need to believe the method school can only lead to self-destruction but that is nothing to do with my experience.”

Does Day-Lewis feel misunderstood, then? Apparently not. Or if he does, he argues it can actually be helpful. 

“You just have to accept it,” he says. “How can you expect people to know you that don’t know you? Some idea of you will grow up, for better or worse, and it may be very much at odds with the reality. 

“But I’ve always thought that it’s as much of a smokescreen as anything, behind which you can just carry on living your life.”

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