In an 11.28 W profile by Lynn Hirscherg, Phantom Thread star Daniel Day Lewis took a stab at explaining why he’s decided to retire from acting. Well, he didn’t actually explain it but he said that a certain soul-draining ennui had seeped into his system as a result of making Phanthom Thread. It had dropped him into a mysterious and enveloping mood pocket that he didn’t want to settle into. Or something like that.
But many of us feel this way at one point or another. Our lives or professional callings are no longer fulfilling us and or have become draining. But very few of us retire or quit our jobs as a result. Why? Because quitting or retiring will require that we live on a smaller income, and most of us don’t want to sacrifice the quality-of-life factor. So we grim up and put up with our frustrations and disappointments and push on.
Why then is Daniel Day Lewis actually retiring? Because he can afford to. He’s got enough put away or enough invested or what-have-you. If he couldn’t afford it he wouldn’t be doing it. Simple as that.
Ostensible reason #1: “Before making the film, I didn’t know I was going to stop acting. I do know that Paul 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 realize what we had given birth to. It was hard to live with. And still is.” HE comment: Poor baby.
Ostensible reason #2: Hirschberg reports that Jim Sheridan, the director of My Left Foot and two other Day-Lewis films, once remarked that “Daniel hates acting.” Day-Lewis to Hirschberg: “I’ll think, is there no way to avoid this? In the case of Phantom Thread, when we started I had no curiosity about the fashion world. I didn’t want to be drawn into it. Even now, fashion itself doesn’t really interest me. In the beginning, we didn’t know what profession the protagonist would have. We chose fashion and then realized, What the hell have we let ourselves into? And then the fashion world got its hooks into me.” HE comment: So the fashion world flew down like an eagle and pounced on poor Daniel and dug its sharp talons into his back and carried him away. Poor baby.
Ostensible reason #3: “There are spells in these films that you can’t account for,” DDL tells Hirschberg. “Paul and I spoke a lot about curses — the idea of a curse on a family, what that might be like. A kind of malady. And it’s not that I felt there was a curse attached to this film, other than the responsibility of a creative life, which is both a curse and a blessing. You can never separate them until the day you die. It’s the thing that feeds you and eats away at you…gives you life and is killing you at the same time.”