MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
For 20 years, a man has been living in the woods in the north of England. Now, he's got everything he needs to survive - a roof over his head, cans of food, piles of firewood. He is isolated. He wants to keep it that way. No one knows where he is, except for one guy, Jem. And one day, Jem shows up unannounced, determined to bring the man home.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "ANEMONE")
DANIEL DAY-LEWIS: (As Ray Stoker) How did I what? How did I manage without you? Yeah, I won't pretend I don't think about it from time to time. But this is it, Jem. This is my life.
SEAN BEAN: (As Jem Stoker) Does it have to be?
KELLY: Daniel Day-Lewis stars as the reclusive Ray Stoker in the new movie "Anemone," which was directed by his son, Ronan Day-Lewis. Father and son are both in our New York studios. Daniel and Ronan Day-Lewis, welcome to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.
D DAY-LEWIS: Thanks so much.
RONAN DAY-LEWIS: Thank you so much for having us.
D DAY-LEWIS: Thanks for having us.
KELLY: Let's jump straight into the story. Daniel Day-Lewis, your character, Ray, as I mentioned, has been off the grid for two decades. And then, suddenly, this guy, Jem, played by the absolutely terrific Sean Bean, walks through the door of your cabin. I know you don't want to give too many twists away, but what happens next?
D DAY-LEWIS: Well, Jem, as we discover him at the very beginning of the story, embarks on this mission in agreement with his wife, Nessa. Jem is my brother, and he has raised a boy with Nessa, who is currently in a great deal of trouble. And there's a connection there. And so when he sets out on the journey to find me, it's with the idea of - as you said, of trying to find some way of convincing me to come back from this place.
KELLY: I didn't realize you two were brothers until there's a great scene where the two of you - you're at the sink, and you're brushing your teeth, and you're rinsing and spitting together. I suddenly thought, OK, these two either were roommates or they're brothers. They've shared a sink.
D DAY-LEWIS: (Laughter) Right, right.
KELLY: So we've already gotten this as a movie about brothers. Ronan, it's also, of course, about fathers and...
R DAY-LEWIS: Yeah.
KELLY: ...Sons and what we pass on. What were you trying to explore here?
R DAY-LEWIS: Yeah, it was interesting 'cause the kind of father-son thread of it crept up on us. We kind of realized that Brian had to become a real person and not just this kind of footnote on the periphery of the brother's story. And I think when we first created a scene of him alone in his room, it really opened up his perspective and this sense of the kind of fascination with the mystery of the past life of your parent.
D DAY-LEWIS: You know, after - I don't know how long it was before we realized that two fellas in a shed, like, we just couldn't...
KELLY: It was feral.
D DAY-LEWIS: ...Live with that anymore.
KELLY: I was thinking, I hope a woman will come in at some point.
D DAY-LEWIS: (Laughter) Right.
R DAY-LEWIS: Yeah.
KELLY: What is the challenge, Ronan, of - OK, this is your feature directorial debut, and I imagine it would always be a challenge to direct one's own parent. And oh, by the way...
R DAY-LEWIS: Yeah.
KELLY: ...Your father is freaking Daniel Day-Lewis. What was that like?
R DAY-LEWIS: (Laughter) Yeah, I mean, I'd sort of been thinking of it in such a kind of low-stakes, playful way for so long 'cause of the way the script came together, which was just, like, us at the kitchen table, working on it.
KELLY: Yeah, y'all wrote the screenplay together.
R DAY-LEWIS: Yes. Yeah, we wrote the script together. So - but there was a moment, I think, when we first got on set where it did hit me, just the gravity of it, but it felt pretty easy to transition into that.
KELLY: Daniel Day-Lewis, this is your first movie in - what? - seven or eight years.
D DAY-LEWIS: Yes. It is, yes.
KELLY: And did your son have to twist your arm to unretire?
D DAY-LEWIS: No. I mean, it may seem like that from the outside, but no, if anything, I think it was really my wish to work with Ronan. Knowing that I'd decided to work at something else for an unknown period of time, there was a kind of anticipatory sadness in me knowing that Ronan would make films. And I thought, I wonder if we can cook something up just for the pure pleasure of working together.
KELLY: So let's go to the mystery - the trauma, I guess, is a better word - the trauma at the center of this film, which has to do with Northern Ireland. Ray...
D DAY-LEWIS: Yes.
KELLY: ...Your character, Daniel, is a former English soldier. He fought there. He carries the legacy of things that happened there that he did. I wondered, why Northern Ireland? There have been so many films, so many dramas that have explored the Troubles. What intrigued the two of you about wanting to revisit that history?
D DAY-LEWIS: Yeah, no, that's certainly true. I mean, but largely the perspective of stories told about the Troubles have been from the other side of the fence. You know, I grew up with sort of deep attachment to both Britain and to Ireland. I have dual citizenship. I have close friends who were on both sides of that terrible argument.
R DAY-LEWIS: Yeah, like, as my dad was saying, his connection to Ireland and then also having grown up there from 7 to 13, we learned about the Troubles in school. And I think since then, it's really loomed large in my imagination. And I think it was also important to me that the film's looking at war and human bloodshed from almost, like, an omniscient perspective.
KELLY: Well, and I was just looking, Ronan, you were born in 1998.
R DAY-LEWIS: Yeah. Yeah.
KELLY: So you must have no direct memory of before the Good Friday Accord, before the - you know, when the Troubles...
R DAY-LEWIS: Yeah. No, it's true.
KELLY: ...Were very much live.
R DAY-LEWIS: Yeah.
D DAY-LEWIS: And conversely...
R DAY-LEWIS: Yeah.
D DAY-LEWIS: ...Over the years, I spent quite a lot of time in the North of Ireland, specifically in Belfast, during the Troubles when they were at the very worst. And it felt like a very, very different and a very threatening place.
KELLY: Yeah. So you're talking about, you know, it matters to have spent time on the ground there to remotely begin to understand this story. Let's go back to where we started and the cabin in the woods, where your character has spent a long time away from the public before finally reemerging. It has not lost on me, Daniel Day-Lewis, that you're doing something of the same thing, having stayed out of the public eye for years.
D DAY-LEWIS: Yeah.
KELLY: Are you drawing on something personal there? You're known as a method actor.
D DAY-LEWIS: It's a funny - no, I'm so glad you asked me that question. I'm delighted to have a chance to respond to it because I think my name is sort of rarely mentioned that the word reclusive or recluse isn't attached to it. And I am not a recluse. I just don't live in the eye of the camera. You know, I mean, if you're not visible publicly, you're deemed to be somehow retired from ordinary, everyday life. You very often see that phrase, breaks silence.
KELLY: Right (laughter).
D DAY-LEWIS: But all it means is that - you know, I talk to people all the time. I'm just not talking into a microphone all the time.
KELLY: Right. Right, right, right.
D DAY-LEWIS: I'm talking to friends and family and working in different ways, in different places. So life goes on, and it is absolutely not the life of a recluse, so (laughter)...
KELLY: Well, let me say thank you to both of you. This has been an absolute pleasure.
R DAY-LEWIS: Thank you so much.
D DAY-LEWIS: Oh, for us, too. Thanks for having us.
R DAY-LEWIS: Yeah, this has been so great.
KELLY: That's the very much not reclusive actor Daniel Day-Lewis...
(LAUGHTER)
D DAY-LEWIS: Thank you. Thank you.
KELLY: ...And his son, the director Ronan Day-Lewis, speaking with us from our New York bureau about their new movie "Anemone."
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
KELLY: It's out through Focus Features, which we should note is a financial sponsor of NPR.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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