After starring in some of the most iconic movies of the last 40 years – Gangs of New York, There Will Be Blood, The Age of Innocence – Daniel Day-Lewis retired after 2017’s Phantom Thread . Perhaps the most famous of the method actors, his commitment to the bit – three years in the gym for The Boxer , weeks in a wheelchair for My Left Foot, learning how to make a canoe for Last of the Mohicans – left him feeling “hollowed out”.

So it was with some surprise – and a few raised eyebrows – that he announced his return last year, to co-write and star in Anemone, directed by none other than his son, Ronan Day-Lewis. Is this another masterclass from one of the finest actors of his generation or a cynical exercise in nepotism? It is, in truth, a bit of both.

Day-Lewis Sr is now fully grey an

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