He’s widely considered to be the greatest actor of his generation – having won three Oscars, four BAFTAs and two Golden Globes over the course of his forty year career.

But in 2017, Daniel Day Lewis sent shockwaves through Hollywood when he announced he was retiring at the age of 60.

The legendary actor – who starred in Gangs of New York, There Will Be Blood, The Last of the Mohicans – never gave a reason for his exit, with his team insisting it was a ‘private decision’.

In a statement, Daniel’s representatives simply said he was ‘immensely grateful for his collaborators and audiences’ and would not be making any further comment.

However, the notoriously private star appears to have made an exception for his director son Ronan, 26, who is currently working on his directorial debut.

Earlier this week, the father-of-three, who is the only person to have won three Best Actor Oscars, was pictured filming scenes in Manchester for the upcoming movie Anemone alongside Sean Bean.

Although Daniel’s role has not been confirmed yet, the British star- who shares eldest son Gabriel with French actress Isabelle Adjani –  was pictured wearing a khaki padded jacket and white helmet as he drove Sean around on a motorbike.

So, how did Daniel spend his seven years in retirement? And does this mark the start of his full-time return to Hollywood? 

As one of Hollywood’s most in-demand actors, Daniel’s high-flying career took him all over the world.

But since retirement, the Lincoln star appears to have been spending an increasing amount of time in the village of Annamoe, County Wicklow.

The Lincoln star was born and raised in London – previously stating in interviews that he spent his teenage years around Deptford, Lewisham and New Cross.

Daniel – whose grandfather was film producer Michael Balcon – was sent to the famously ‘progressively’ Bedales school in Hampshire, which also counts Kirstie Allsopp and Lily Allen among its famous alumni. 

As his career went from strength-to-strength, the actor split his time between London, New York and Los Angeles – but Ireland always remained a safe haven for the star.

Daniel’s late father was the former Poet Laureate Cecil Day Lewis, who was born in Ballintubbert, Ireland, in 1904.

Although Cecil moved to London when he was two years old following the death of his mother, the poet would spend school holidays in County Wexford with the maternal side of his family.

In 1990, Daniel won his first Best Actor Academy Award for My Left Foot – and revealed in his speech how Ireland has become a special place for him too.

He told the Oscars audience: ‘You’ve just provided me with the makings of one hell of a weekend in Dublin.’

Daniel met his future wife Rebecca – who is the daughter of legendary playwright Arthur Miller – in 1995 when he visited her father’s New York home.

The couple married that year and bought a house in the village of Annamoe, County Wicklow – choosing to raise their family between the US and Ireland.

The actor is reported to spend his time in the sleep Irish village by fishing and cycling around the mountainous landscape.

What’s more, he’s also believed to have taken up a new hobby by starting to run with Parnell Athletics Club.

In 2009, Daniel was the first person to ever receive the Freedom of County Wicklow and opened up about his love for the area in his acceptance speech.

He said: ‘This is the place that sustains me. This is where I have planted myself. It is a refuge where I restore myself […]

‘That’s one of the reasons why this place suits me so well because I’m allowed to go quietly about my business.’ 

In 2013, several locals told the Irish Independent that Daniel was a ‘modest’ man who liked the privacy that the village afforded him.

Tony Keeley – the owner of Hardware & Garden Centre – said: ‘I remember one day he stopped by the shop and was asking me stuff about the store and his Mercedes.

‘It’s an old-Mercedes he was driving – it looked about 14 years old. He isn’t into buying new stuff, he’s modest.

‘He’s lovely man, he would always stop and say hello and have a word for you.’ 

Residents also claimed that their local pub was where Steven Spielberg convinced Daniel to take on the role of Abraham Lincoln in his 2013 film, which he won his third Best Actor Oscar for.

In his 2007 BAFTA acceptance speech for There Will Be Blood, Daniel also gushed about how Millwall football stadium in South-East London was one of the ‘playgrounds of [his] childhood’.

Speaking to The Chap magazine, Daniel explained how he supported the team with ‘great gusto’.

He said: ‘I was fascinated by the streets that were close by – Lewisham, New Cross, Deptford – and I roamed the streets of South London and supported Millwall with great gusto, and was on the terraces every Saturday with the rest of the lads. 

‘That part of my life means a lot to me – that time before I went to boarding school, when I was roaming the streets of Deptford. It was heaven, just discovering that world.’

What’s more, statement Daniel Day-Lewis issued in 2017 wasn’t the first time the actor had quit acting – and he may well have picked up an old favourite hobby this time round.

In the late 1990s, the star – who is famous for his method acting – famously announced his retirement after starring in The Boxer and retrained as a shoemaker.

The star relocated to Florence with Rebecca and their two children so Daniel could study with Stefano Bemer, who passed away aged 48 in 2012.

Daniel stopped by Stefano’s shop in 1997 on the recommendation of his London shoemaker – and then returned daily for eight months to work as an apprentice.

The brand’s website states: ‘Perfection is an ongoing quest! This constant journey is best represented by the ten months Stefano Bemer spent teaching Daniel Day-Lewis – a man known for his meticulous approach to his craft – the art of shoemaking. 

‘Their shared passion for their respective art forms brought them together: Mr. Day-Lewis doesn’t simply play a role, he becomes his character.’

However, Daniel was eventually drawn back to Hollywood following his five-year hiatus and appeared in Martin Scorsese’s 2002 blockbuster Gangs of New York.

He said of his time as a shoemaker: ‘It was a period of my life that I had a right to without any intervention of that kind.’ 

However, Daniel will no doubt have spent the past seven years enjoying some quality time with his wife of 28 years.

The couple met when Daniel visited Arthur Miller’s New York while filming the 1995 film adaptation of his play The Crucible.

In 2003, The Guardian reports that Daniel once said of his future father-in-law : ‘There’s something about Arthur that makes you wish he was your father. I’d like to turn up on his doorstep with adoption papers.’

At the time of their whirlwind romance and subsequent Vermont wedding, Daniel had been branded a ‘love rat’ by the media – after walking out on his French actress girlfriend Isabelle Adjani, who recently appeared in Netflix’s The Perfect Couple, while she was pregnant. 

However, Rebecca told the publication that she had never paid attention to the reports surrounding her husband. 

Rebecca is a hugely accomplished writer and director in her own right – and even directed her husband in the 2005 film The Ballad of Jack and Rose.

In 2017, the mother-of-two directed a documentary on her father called Arthur Miller: Writer, which was nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Arts & Culture Documentary.

Since Daniel announced his surprise retirement in 2017, the couple – who share Ronan, 26, and Cashel, 22 – have been regularly pictured arm-in-arm on the streets of New York.

When they’re not in Ireland, the couple seem to spend the majority of their time in New York – where their sons, who have followed in their mother’s footsteps to become filmmakers, attended school.

In December 2018, Daniel as pictured using a flip phone as he sat alone on a park bench in a Downtown Manhattan park. 

Ever the supportive husband, Daniel joined Rebecca and their son Ronan at a special screening of her film She Came to Me, which stars Anne Hathaway and Peter Dinklage in October 2023.

Daniel has been nominated six times for Best Lead Actor, including for In The Name Of The Father (1994), Gangs Of New York (2003) and Phantom Thread (2018)

He also won an as-yet-unmatched-by-any-male three of them, for My left Foot (1990), There Will Be Blood (2008) and Lincoln (2013).

Only Katherine Hepburn has more Oscars — four — from her 12 nominations, which were all for Best Actress.