Daniel Day-Lewis is a veteran soldier-turned-recluse in ‘Anemone’
Daniel Day-Lewis and Sean Bean play estranged brothers in the feverish family drama “Anemone,” which is directed by Ronan Day-Lewis.
For Daniel Day-Lewis, creativity just runs in the family.
The three-time Oscar winner is back with his first movie in eight years, “Anemone,” which he cowrote with his son Ronan. The younger Day-Lewis also directed the tempestuous drama (in select theaters Oct. 3, nationwide Oct. 10), which marks the latest in a long string of fantastical projects that father and son have embarked on together.
When Ronan was small, “there’s a book that we made about the adventures of an octopus,” Daniel recalls, speaking over Zoom with his son by his side. “I cut up an old pair of swimming shorts and I bound it. And one time when we were in Texas, Ronan put on a play with a puppet, which was extraordinary. I think I made a pair of knee-length moccasins for that.”
More recently, Daniel, 68, helped his son assemble and paint a 200-pound wax sculpture “the size of a pony,” Ronan, 27, says with a laugh. It was for an art exhibition, but it now “lives in my brother’s bedroom – it takes up like half the room.”
Daniel Day-Lewis says he’s nothing like his ‘Anemone’ character
“Anemone” is the directorial debut of Ronan, who pulled from his background as a painter to create the film’s evocative, dreamlike imagery. Daniel plays a tormented ex-soldier named Ray, who retreats into the forest after a traumatic incident during his military service. The movie picks up with his brother, Jem (Sean Bean), who reconnects with Ray and urges him to return home to his wife (Samantha Morton) and now-grown son (Samuel Bottomley).
Ronan has long wanted to explore brotherhood, having two siblings of his own: model Gabriel-Kane, 30, from Daniel’s relationship with actress Isabelle Adjani; and musician Cashel, 23, from Daniel’s marriage to filmmaker Rebecca Miller, whom he wed in 1996.
“The beauty and tragedy potential in that (fraternal) relationship was just fascinating to me, but I couldn’t find a way in,” Ronan says. At first, he considered writing a coming-of-age film, until one day Daniel came to him and suggested they make something together. Sitting at the edge of the bed with a laptop, they started bouncing ideas back and forth and throwing them into a Google Doc, which over four years took shape into a script.
“Ronan was working full-time as a painter, but I knew films were in his future and I regretted the thought that I might not get to work with him,” Daniel says. The Hollywood icon didn’t set out to portray Ray, but as they improvised and wrote dialogue, he eventually became most invested in that character.
“The most obvious thing is, ‘Oh, well, he’s a hermit.’ I’m not a hermit,” Daniel says. “Some people may wish to think of me as one, but I just lead a quiet life amongst people. I’m not a recluse; I’ve never wished to be a recluse in that way. So it was the exploration of a character that was in no way connected to my own experience.”
The Day-Lewis clan weighed in on various aspects of the project: Cashel is “an amazing composer” who gave “very helpful” suggestions about the score and songs, Ronan says, while Miller was the first person to read a full draft of the script.
“We were on tenterhooks because we didn’t really know what we had or what we were doing or whether it was going to be compelling to anyone else,” Ronan says. “Even though she’s my mom, I can still tell when she feels a certain way about something. So seeing her be impacted by it emotionally was really encouraging.”
Before filming started, Daniel invited Bean to his home in Ireland, where the actors spent a few days getting to know each other over whiskey, stew and walks in the woods. Ronan was similarly generous and warm when production got underway.
“He’s an easygoing man and a very good director,” Bean says. “Having his dad by his side was obviously reassuring, but he had a plan. He’s an artist in his own right.”
Ronan Day-Lewis loved everything from Terrence Malick to ‘Finding Nemo’ growing up
As a young boy, Ronan remembers his parents showing him a variety of foreign-language and arthouse movies, including “Badlands,” “The Tree of Life” and “Rocco and His Brothers.” The latter “was traumatizing, but it definitely awakened me to the power of film,” Ronan says.
There was kid-appropriate fare, too: He fondly recalls his mom introducing him to old TV shows like “Bewitched” and “Bonanza,” and taking him to the theater to see “Ice Age.”
“That was his favorite,” Daniel says, smiling. “We certainly watched some fairly daft stuff as well with great pleasure. I don’t think we consciously set out to educate our children in film history. They were just films that were meaningful to us. We thought, ‘Why not? Let’s try them out and just see if it arouses their interest.’”
These days, their family still enjoys watching movies and “taking the piss out of each other,” Daniel says. “Ronan has always been able to make me laugh, to the point of embarrassment sometimes in public situations. I completely lose it.”
By now, Daniel has had to explain many times that he regrets announcing his retirement from acting after 2017’s “Phantom Thread.” He says that “Anemone” has rekinkled his love for the craft, and he hopes to create more with Ronan and others.
“I’m definitely thinking about it, and talking to one or two people,” Daniel says. “The work has an obsessional quality, and you have to share that (obsession) with the other person to go into that world for that amount of time. But I’ll always be trying things out with Ronan, just to see what happens.”
Ronan grins: “Likewise.”