Daniel Day-Lewis Nails Sheffield Accent in Anemone, Earning Raves From Game of Thrones Star
Game of Thrones alum Sean Bean lifts the lid on Daniel Day-Lewis’s uncompromising method, recalling their charged time on the psychological drama Anemone and offering a rare glimpse at the intensity behind his performances.
Daniel Day-Lewis is back on a movie set, and yes, he is still very much Daniel Day-Lewis about it. The film is called 'Anemone', it is a father-son project with his son Ronan Day-Lewis making his feature debut, and if you were wondering whether the method acting stories are exaggerated, Sean Bean has receipts.
- Title: Anemone
- Director: Ronan Day-Lewis (feature debut), co-written with Daniel Day-Lewis
- Cast: Daniel Day-Lewis, Sean Bean, Samantha Morton
- Runtime: 126 minutes
- Producer: Plan B Entertainment
- Box office: $310,000 domestic, $310,000 worldwide so far (no international reported yet, per Box Office Mojo)
- Now playing in US theaters
Sean Bean watched the method up close
Bean co-stars with Day-Lewis in the psychological drama and told USA Today he got the full immersion treatment. Day-Lewis stayed in character through filming and even off-camera moments. The accent of choice this time: Sheffield. Bean says Day-Lewis kept it going even over a casual cup of tea, which, if you know Bean, is about as on-the-nose as it gets.
"He was speaking to me with a Sheffield accent all the way through... It just felt like I was talking to a mate of mine from Sheffield."
It is the kind of detail that sounds like an urban legend until someone like Bean confirms it with a shrug that says, Yep, that tracks.
Ronan Day-Lewis had a surreal pre-shoot phone call
Ronan, who co-wrote the film with his dad, shared a very inside-baseball moment: about two weeks before cameras rolled, he picked up a call meant for his father and realized he was not talking to Daniel anymore. He was talking to Ray, the character. Total out-of-body moment, but par for the Day-Lewis course.
How Day-Lewis eases into Day 1 by pretending it already happened
Day-Lewis explained that he tries to blur the line between prep and production so the first official day on set does not feel like a hard reset. It is less switch-flip, more gradual slide into the work with the crew he is closest to. That takes the edge off what he calls the confrontation with the camera.
"For me and the people I am working closely with, it is a continuation of what is already taking place... I try to ease through that transition a good while before we get to the set."
Why he came back: the spark, the circus, and working with his son
'Anemone' started life as an idea for a short and grew from there. Somewhere in that expansion, Day-Lewis found the thing he said he would need before ever returning: a creative furnace that actually felt lit. Speaking to The New York Times, he admitted the physical reality of a set still messes with him a little.
"I have to find my way to ignoring all of that paraphernalia, but certainly with the sight of the caravans and the cables and the equipment, the heart misses a couple of beats. I hope that it will feel like a continuation of the work that is already happening, that it is never like a Day 1."
Worth noting: his earlier retirement had less to do with acting itself and more to do with the public-facing side of fame. Teaming with Ronan clearly tipped the scales back. Father and son writing together, son directing, Plan B producing, and Day-Lewis tunneling into a new role like it is oxygen. If you are sensing a theme, you are not wrong.
Is this the big return of capital-M method acting in modern movies? Maybe. Or maybe it is just Day-Lewis doing what only he does, which is more than enough. Either way, 'Anemone' is out now in US theaters.