Daniel Day-Lewis and Ronan Day-Lewis: Father-and File filmmakers on the manufacture of “anemone”

He was called the largest actor of his generation – a triple winner of the Oscars and a reluctant star. “The work itself has always been, has only remained a source of fascination and pleasure for me, the work itself,” said Daniel Day-Lewis. “The consequences of the work have always been difficult for me. You know, you become a commercial representative for this work for this work. And I am not good for that. I have never been. And I am still not. And this particular part, the public part of this, always left me feeling the victim of rape.”

And Eight years ago, he announced his retirement. But now a clarification: “I think it was a mistake,” he said. “I think it just created a kind of confusion. At the time, I never intended to retire anything. I chose to stop doing one type of work so that I can perhaps focus on another type of work.”

It was part of the musical interlude: “My youngest son, Cashel, is a violin player. And once the idea took root in my head, like:” I wonder if I could make him a violin “, it was – you know, things tend to do it, yes, it is difficult to let go of a thing.”

He did three, and he says that he has the creation of a fourth, “but I have not yet got there.”

Day-Lewis admits that he was surprised to feel a strong impulse to return to the action: “And in large part, it was in response to the knowledge that Ronan would make films.”

The middle of the middle of the twenty-seven, Ronan Day-Lewis, brings references and expectations: his mother, filmmaker and author Rebecca Miller, and grandfather, playwright Arthur Miller.

I asked Ronan: “Has your move a surprise for your parents?”

“Not really, because I started making small films with my friends when I was, like seven,” he replied. “When I was really young, I would always be the only one to try to make the absence of everyone to make a short film on our father, like, Flip Camera in the courtyard or something.”

“Anemone” is his director’s debut, co-written with his father, who plays Ray Stoker. The story takes place in a distant cabin. Ronan said: “The first type of concrete anchor, I think, was the idea of ​​this man who is in a way in this form of exile, which he lives in the middle of nowhere. For any reason that relates to his past, he has somehow separated and banished himself in this isolated place.”

After twenty years, his brother (played by Sean Bean) arrives to bring Ray Stoker back to the son whom he never met. Daniel said, “I felt that I knew Ray early in the writing process. I don’t know why I did it. I did it. 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 (“Fant Fantôme”), in the boxing ring (“The Boxer”), in a wheelchair (“My left foot”). But after more than 20 cinema roles, a character remains elusive: Daniel Day-Lewis.

I asked what pushes him to such perfection.

“I resisted the analysis to a large extent because, perhaps by superstition, I thought it could interfere with the impulse, which was strong in me and is still it,” replied Daniel. “But I mean, put on the spot, I would say that it has something to do with this period which was very dark in my life when I was sent back to school.”

Her mother, actress Jill Balcon, came from an eminent family of British films. His father, Cecil Day-Lewis, died at the age of 15, was well known in literary circles-perhaps not so known at home.

“It is not that we have never been able to see it,” said Daniel. “He was a good man. But my only conversations I remember having with him (was) when I was in difficulty, what I was often for all kinds of different things. It is my memory. It may be a distorted memory.”

In 1968, his father was appointed poet winner of the United Kingdom, and Daniel was sent to the boarding school at 11 years old. “I felt like I was at sea,” he said. “I had no friends. I was the victim of intimidation. I was disjointed, but in this place, you are considered, as, just scandalously not civilized if you had a blow on someone, which I did from time to time.”

Despite the argument, he was left to finish: “It was my father’s decision. He thought I should stay there, and that I would feel a feeling of defeat if I left. But I don’t think, because he didn’t really see me, he did not understand the degree I was already defeated.”

And yet, the boarding school is the place where he found his work of life. “I made a few small songs in school games,” he said. “And it was not the magic of the theater for me; it was the alternative world, where all around me seemed quite dark. It was a place that was lit for me.”

But fame came with a darker side, because he was warned by the head of a prestigious summer theater program for adolescents 50 years ago. “He embarked on a kind of tale built on the world of professional game and theater, on the Sleaze and corruption, and I was really naive enough at that time. But something about what he said that day stayed with me. I never wondered about work, but I wondered if I wondered about the world I had to become a cabinet manufacturer.

He seems to have found a comfortable place at the crossroads in “Anemone”: a reluctant father on the film and a devoted father out of camera.

“Anemone” is the culmination of a year-end collaboration of a year.

I questioned Ronan about the confidence and confidence involved in this collaboration. “Yeah, yes, he never suggested that it was a big problem,” he replied. “But I have always felt this incredible feeling of pressure, not wanting to drop it. I felt that it was probably more deeply than the kind of external pressure of the way the film could be received, or the expectations that come with its own, you know, the return.”

An unexpected return impatiently awaited. However, Daniel Day-Lewis is silent in his expectations: “We do not last long. Films can sometimes have a long life, and I suppose that you cannot help but hope that something of your work will be important for a person in the times to come. But there is, yes, no guarantee of that.”

Web exclusivity: prolonged interview-Daniel Day-Lewis and Ronan Day-Lewis (video)

For more information:

• “Anemone” (development features) now plays in theaters

History produced by Kay Lim. Editor -in -chief: Lauren Barnello.