Friends of Daniel Day-Lewis say the Oscar winner hatched his plan to quit acting years ago and was just searching for the right film that would allow him to go out on top. And now there’s buzz in Hollywood his next move could be working as a haute couture dressmaker.
Reps for the enigmatic Day-Lewis confirmed this week that he was retiring from acting, with no other details about the move.
But sources exclusively tell Page Six that he’s been planning the surprise move for some time. As far back as three years ago, the actor was telling pals he would hang it up, but needed the right project to cap off his career, which has included Steven Spielberg’s “Lincoln,” Martin Scorsese’s “Gangs of New York,” “My Left Foot” and Paul Thomas Anderson’s “There Will Be Blood.”
“He’s so method, it takes him three years to prepare for a role,” said a source of the actor. “He was telling friends he really wanted to go out with a bang.”
That “bang” will be Anderson’s next film, a top-secret film that’s set in the fashion world of 1950s London. No one’s seen any footage from the film, which has a Dec. 25 release date. (Reports have said the film’s called “Phantom Thread,” but distributor Focus Features says it’s still untitled.)
Day-Lewis, who won the Best Actor Oscar for Anderson’s “There Will Be Blood,” will promote the new collaboration after it comes out. But besides that, his rep said this week, Day-Lewis “will no longer be working as an actor,” calling it a “private decision.”
That sent Hollywood into overdrive wondering what he’ll do next, since the actor took a five-year break in the ’90s to work as a cobbler in a fancy Italian shoe factory. A source told Page Six that Day-Lewis did such intense research and learned so much about couture fashion for his final film playing “an uncompromising dressmaker commissioned by royalty and high society” that he will stick with the profession off-screen and become a dressmaker.
Others noted that since his statement said specifically “working as an actor,” it leaves the door open for him to direct.