Daniel Day-Lewis has explained for the first time why he's chosen to retire from acting.
The There Will Be Blood star announced that he was quitting the profession for good earlier this year, saying only that it was a "private decision".
However, he has now revealed more about his decision in a new interview with W Magazine, saying that making his last movie Phantom Thread wore him down emotionally.
"Before making the film, I didn't know I was going to stop acting," he explained. "I do know that Paul [Thomas Anderson, the movie's director] 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."
The actor, as always, immersed himself in his role, making a dress from scratch to play Phantom Thread's1950s couturier Reynolds Woodcock, as well as watching fashion shows from the period and conferring with Cassie Davies-Strodder, who was working as the curator of fashion and textiles at the Victoria and Albert Museum at the time.
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Pushed to explain why exactly he'd decided to quit, Day-Lewis admitted: "I haven't figured it out... But it's settled on me, and it's just there. Not wanting to see the film is connected to the decision I've made to stop working as an actor. But it's not why the sadness came to stay. That happened during the telling of the story, and I don't really know why."
He later added: "I need to believe in the value of what I'm doing. The work can seem vital. Irresistible even. And if an audience believe it, that should be good enough for me. But, lately, it isn't."
Day-Lewis also acknowledged that he has wanted to quit many times before – he famously went into 'semi-retirement', becoming an apprentice shoemaker, after making The Boxer in 1997 – but was always sucked back into another project. He therefore felt that making a public announcement was the only way to make his decision binding.
Phantom Thread is released in cinemas February 2, 2018.
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