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Upfront payment of $45 per three-month plan, $15 per month equivalent required. New customer offer first three months only, then full price plan options available, taxes and fees extra. See MintMobile.com. This is Jane Pauley. What did it take to get Daniel Day-Lewis back on the big screen?
A chance to work with his son Ronan. I sat down with both of them. Such controversy over your return from Retirement. Uh seems to perplex some people. Explain now what your decision was at that time.
I think that was a mistake. I think it just uh created a Yeah. kind of confusion and At the time I I never intended to retire from anything. I chose to stop doing one kind of work so that I could perhaps concentrate on a different kind of work. for a period of time and In this most recent case, I felt that that would probably Um take me you know.
as far down the road as I was ever going to go.
So it did surprise me to feel the the impulse. quite strongly again, and largely it was in response to The the st the knowledge that Ronan would be making films, um Sadness I felt that I couldn't work with him because we've worked together on a lot of things over the years, making things together and. And so we just decide to try and cook something up. Uh really to give ourselves that chance to work together. That that's how how it began.
But When I made that statement, Uh and my close friends. Um all advise me not to do it. I felt quite strongly that I needed to do it as a reminder to myself, because You know, I carry quite a lot of uh of pride of the the less admirable kind and Um I thought, well, I'll be too proud to go back on my word if I You know, if I say something when I've just proved to myself that I'm good. Quite capable of going back on my word. Are you familiar with a phrase, good work?
I'm not. I mean, until you mentioned it, I wasn't. Good work is work that you are aligned with. The mission, the purpose, the values of the enterprise. Who you work for, the work you do.
Being regularly, if not continually, reinforced in that idea of alignment. But you knew it wasn't there. you weren't aligned with the work of acting. after you made the phantom thread. I I was.
I mean in in that that's maybe the complicating Factor that I absolutely was aligned with it. I've never not worked except. when I felt utterly compelled. Um You know, I That piece of work was no different than any other. I was fully engaged with it.
In the aftermath of doing that work, I was just left with a very deep sadness that. The didn't lift for quite a long time and And uh I'd Say In defense of the way I work, as people have suggested, not people that know me, but people, other people. Who weighed in on it have suggested it's because of the way that I work, but. They don't know how I work. It's absolutely...
Nothing to do. With The particular Um way in which I choose to work. It in this case it was more to do with a a just a period in my life, I think. Um The work itself has always been has remained um Uh nothing but a source of fascination and pleasure to me. the work itself.
The aftermath of the work has always been difficult for me. You become to some extent a sales rep for that work and I'm not good at that, I never was and I'm Still not and And that particular part of it, the public part of it, has always left me. feeling cut emptied out. Getting to know Christy Brown required you to spend your life in a wheelchair for months before you shot frame of the movie.
Well it in itself didn't require me to, but um I suppose I choose to a large extent what I What I believe is required of me. I mean, there was no one telling me I had to do that. But if you hadn't done it, you just would have been acting.
Well, that's the job. But just acting, not understanding. Yeah, that's exactly it, Jane. The reason I'm hedging a little bit around this is because currently. the method.
Is subject to a kind of we're in a period where it's an easy target. But it's been made a target mostly by people that have little or no understanding of what it actually involves. And I think there's a misconception about it being a Some sort of arcane, mysterious system which involves a lot of self-flagellation, is very self-indulgent, and somehow. isolates you. Potentially from engagement with the other people that you're working with.
part of that which actually relates to the work. And No matter what system anyone chooses, or no system whatsoever, everyone's intention is the same: that you arrive in front of the camera on set and and you have a living. engaged relationship with your colleagues.
So Um And what you suggest is absolutely right. That to be able to do that, first of all, you have to have a sense of. And so all the work really is is is in an attempt to understand for yourself Or to create that illusion for yourself that you experience the world through that. Um character. This project the film, Your First as a Director.
Uh Ronan Day-Lewis. Uh has um A long history with the two of you. How did it begin? Yeah, well, it's hard to pinpoint the exact beginning, but I for years had had this kind of vague idea of wanting to write something about brotherhood, having brothers myself, and just being kind of fascinated in that sort of the beauty and tragedy of that. That kind of archetype.
And when my dad approached me saying that he would love to. try to kind of find something for us to To look at together. It turned out that he had separately actually had this fascination with Brotherhood and the idea of. Kind of specifically the ways that The brother relationship can kind of involve this communication that goes beyond words and this kind of silence. The first kind of concrete anchor, I think, was the idea of this man who's kind of in this form of self-exile, that he's living in the middle of nowhere.
For some reason that pertains to his past, he's kind of separated himself and banished himself to this isolated place. And that in the beginning of the film, his estranged brother, who he hasn't seen in 20 years, shows up on his doorstep. Gradually, the kind of, I guess, armature of their world and of their shared past started to kind of reveal itself, kind of growing out from that. But it started with this very simple.
sort of concept. And you were a very young man. I think you were in co college. I was yeah, I was just um just graduating. I was uh finishing like finals and stuff and my uh like senior thesis was um I was an art major and I had to I had to do this my final show and because this everything was shut down because of COVID, I ended up doing a doing it in this shed in the backyard and just kind of it was a crazy time.
But having that time together initially where we were we were in the same place, I think was great. Because then over Over the course of the next few years, we were obviously in different places for periods of time and off doing different things, but whenever we'd, we wouldn't write when we weren't together.
So, whenever we'd come back together, we'd be like, okay, let's. Let's give it a shot, see if there's we can get a few more pages done and yeah. is very gradual. But in producing the pages of a story about people who are not. yourselves.
You had to have grown Uh far more. for closer, with a far greater insight into each other. Uh-huh. To what degree was this an exploration, intentionally or not, of your own father-son relationship.
Well, certainly not intentionally in any way at all, really, just because of the work that we've done together. time we'd spent together in the past, it was really just for the joy of having that time together for me. Yeah, yeah, no, same. It wasn't, yeah, it was never, that was never the intention.
Well Your ability to compartmentalize yourselves is admirable and frankly unbelievable. Fair point. Fair point. For example, The absent father theme Is it the heart, the spine, the whatever of your story? I guess so.
It can't have escaped you that you virtually. You virtually had an absent father. In the context of the times, probably no different to most uh Um Sons' experiences with their fathers. My father was particular in that his work was a work which. which kept him very self-absorbed, I think.
He he was For the most part, preoccupied with his work, that the household definitely revolved around his. routine his schedule. Um his work. But he was a kind man, he was affectionate. But he yeah, he was removed from the everyday family life in my memory of it.
Who was your father? He was a poet. Ah, he was a poet. And a writer of novels as well, but principally a poet. Principally a poet laureate.
He was the poet laureate. I think it's okay if you do. Yeah, he was the poet laureate. I think I was 12 when he was made poet laureate. which already was I think um you know a a decision which probably the was a you know, he was he must have had some inner conflict about that because being an Irishman, I think to accept the The poet laureateship of Great Britain is, you know, always It was, uh, you know.
a significant decision. In my memory of it You know, yes, there were times spent as a family together on holiday. Um in the summers It's not that we never got to see him, he read to us, he was a good man. But my only conversations I remember having with them Oh, you when I was in trouble. which I was frequently.
for all kinds of different things. And then I was sent to boarding school and then he died.
So that's my memory of it. It may be uh distorted memory button. Fame. would have been a presence in In your upbringing, your father was famous. Your father.
It was famous. Where did fame fit in the picture in your house? I mean, I think I was really lucky that my dad, but both my parents, really. were very conscious of keeping me and my brothers sort of separate from as shielded from from fame as possible. But the I mean, the positive aspect of it is that we like spending some time on sets growing up was really just like some of the most um Like important memories from my childhood, like living in Marfa, Texas for a few months when they were shooting their will-be blood was just really burned itself into.
Into my like that, those landscapes, and also just that visiting the set and seeing that sense of kind of make-believe and kind of constructing this whole. Artificial world, but that felt so real. Like once you're inside it, I think that was really intoxicating. And the film my parents made together, The Ballad of Jack and Rose, which they shot on Prince Edward Island, I was like five, but I still remember that so vividly. It was, it was, there was this crazy.
Set where the house was sort of built into the side of a hill where they'd kind of grown grass over the roof of the house, and it was this just kind of integrated into the landscape, and sort of seeing that. Come together and get physically constructed, and then them kind of living inside of that was a really Amazing experience, but um, but yeah, no, it wasn't until I mean I think at some point at school like their kids started to see like Last of the Mohicans or something like their parents would show it to them and then that's when you know I started to become more aware of it. But I think especially early on like they my parents did a good job of keeping keeping that kind of I day for the most part. We'll have more from our Sunday morning extended interview. after this break.
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A lineage of fame and accomplishment. You seem to have. Uh Oh. kept that 800 pound gorilla. outside The house.
Deliberately. I think I was quite lucky, Jane, in that I knew from a very early Um time when I started working as an actor that that there would always Be an encroaching threat to one's to one's um private life unless. unless you guard it against it by whatever means. And I didn't have a family at that time, so I was able to sort of suck most of that stuff up and deal with it. But it did come to a point where.
Just living in the city became very difficult. I was living in London at the time and I moved to rural Ireland, still as a fairly young man and Um And that place became a sanctuary and and remains a sanctuary. And that bega that was the first seven years of schooling that that Roe and his brothers had was in Ireland. And luckily, I had that insight from an early age that it was something you had to Protect if you were going to have it. If you let it go, you can't really have it back again.
um that that sense of uh of um uh a relatively secure private life. Were did you feel blessed by that decision? I think I was like kind of naively unaware of it for a long time and then as I started to become More aware of it. I would only kind of experience it in very short snippets, like glimpses. And I remember one time walking outside and I forget what it was, I was some kind of screening or something, and hearing so many people kind of screaming my dad's name.
And that was like a crazy, it was sort of scary, actually. Like, I was like, oh, this is, this is, uh, this is like this whole. Kind of thing that I was like dimly aware of but wasn't actually like experi like hadn't actually experienced firsthand. And there were like a couple of events I went to but for the most part I was pretty content to not be not be in the middle of that. Yeah.
Well your own upbringing, your parents made um Interesting decisions about your education, too. I mean, if you were to choose the broadest possible spectrum of posit of education in Britain, I got I got the entire thing. from soup to nuts, because You know, I started at a kind of rough and tumble What we call state schools, public schools, primary school in South East London. which I loved. I was very happy there.
And Uh At the age of 11, I suppose, my parents thought, Well, now, because we didn't really learn, you know, we'd play soccer in the playground and learn a bit of English, and there'd be a few fights, and that was it.
So then they thought I needed an education. Off I went to boarding school. But the problem for me was that, you know. On paper, that boarding school I went to probably You know, it should have been. The culture I came from, a house full of books and You know, it should have been A place I'd feel at home, but to me it's like everyone, all the signposts have just been ripped out of the ground.
I didn't understand, I didn't understand the language, the people, the culture. I was absolutely at sea from the moment I got there. He was posh. It was posh. It was eight hundred boys in dark suits and straw hats.
Um And it was strict in the way those places are. But beyond that, the education was bewildering to me because they'd already done, started Latin, French. New mathematics, physics, chemistry. I mean, there wasn't a subject apart from English. That wasn't absolutely baffling to me.
So that was. How long did that last?
Well it lasted in my case for two years and then I ran away. But I mean only having tried every other means to get expelled and they didn't Seem to want to expel me, possibly because of my father. I do not know. People certainly were getting expelled for far lesser crimes than than I committed. Hijinx.
Best not go into that. No one got hurt, put it that way. But The hooligan part of me just Just took over really in that place because. I'm making light of it, but But It wasn't the fault of the school, a lot of people perfectly happy there. It was just me.
I just didn't. I felt at a very early age that I would be crushed and it was a bad feeling. I didn't think I would survive as a human being if I had to stay at that place. It sounds like pretty good material. material for a future actor though.
I don't know. the range of experience that your father had is pretty good material for someone who needs to understand the range of human experience. Yeah, is where I was going with that. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Luckily, um I after I legged it from that place And then I ended up, I went to a co-educational boarding school.
which was a very different thing. I was very, very happy there. What did you learn there?
Well, I mean, there was a lot of theatre. Academically, I was always. Uh Yeah. A little bit dodgy, but But I made furniture, I painted, I played soccer, like, you know. like a mad person.
I couldn't have been happier, really. It sounds like a really well-rounded place. Yeah, it is. Yeah, it's a remarkable place. Do you have a equivalent abilities to do and make and Learn.
It's funny, like I don't, with three-dimensional things, like I feel like the idea of all the measurements and kind of Almost like mathematics that go into furniture making and violin making, which he was just doing for a while, are really intimidating to me. But as far as like, yeah, but I'm a painter, so and I've been kind of before that, I was drawing as far as I can remember. Yeah, I never felt at ease if I wasn't making something.
So I think in that sense, yeah. For sure. I mean, Ronan was a painter from early childhood. I don't just mean like, oh, Yeah. Often kids can create very beautiful work, which they then somehow grow out of, and then it's gone.
But we understood that Ronan, that was going to be his future. It was clear that was going to be his future from the earliest age. He was a compulsive maker of images. I had a, didn't, I have an atcha sketchette. Yeah, yes.
My dad rode uh bikes, so I was like obsessively drawing motor bikes on an atcha sketch of just like single line drawings. Yeah, which I was they told me about that. Yeah, and then and then you go, and the thing would gone and we know, like we wanted to preserve these images. But um, anyway. Your son's abullience and confidence.
Yes. It smacks one in the face. It's the first thing you see about a young man who has. A major motion picture about to be released into the world. Are you fearful for your son?
You set him up for this. Not fearful, but def I think we both share, even if we don't necessarily show it, a degree of like s sort of swirling anxiety that is, yeah. Was there a moment? An opportunity to look at the film for you. to see the film for the first time.
Screen it, or were you? Were you involved in the editorial process? I've always enjoyed being in the cutting room if I've been invited, and we were all in Ireland. for you know six months um this year. Um and uh quite a good bit of that time was spent in the cutting room just get getting to know the film.
to see What the possibilities might be. Certainly, in terms of performance as well, I'm always love.
Sort of sifting through work just trying to find the best work of actors and But yeah, no, it was lovely to just be a spectator during that time. And That Part of it, that first encounter can be a fearful thing if it happens in that way, that there's a screening suddenly. The thing is finished and you go in and meet it for the first time. Um but Mostly that doesn't happened to me in that way. And this this was lovely.
This was a lovely period. How many years ago did Daniel Day-Lewis Had anybody outside of your family known was coming back. We started writing it and We didn't know if it would really honestly fully materialize into a full script.
So at first it was kind of it was this dream, like it would be it would be amazing if it kind of came together. We wrote the first two ten pages or so in quite quickly, like in the beginning, and then that became like a kind of Almost like a wish. And then gradually, like a few more pages would sort of build up, a few more pages would build up. It was on the back burner for a long time, and we weren't thinking. But then there was a moment where.
We got to spend a long period of time together again in In Ireland, actually, and suddenly it started to build momentum and we reached like the 70-page mark or something. We were like, oh, it's actually tipped over the edge where it's going to be a full feature, and we know where we're going. It's going to be a Ronan Day-Lewis production starring Daniel Day-Lewis. And that was the moment, I guess that was the moment where it was like, okay, we are going to. But we always, right from the word go, as far as I was concerned, it was purely with the idea of working with Ronan.
We would write it and then somehow film it, and I would act in it. And we would have that experience together.
So that you could say that began like four or five years ago, right? I wish you would mention that before, because people would have enjoyed the prospect of looking forward to your return to CSI.
Well, I suppose the truth of it is that most You know, most of the work that goes towards anything is done in the shadows, and this is no exception. Like, most of the preparatory work. um in this case from the origin of its The first seed of an idea. There's nothing to share with anyone. You just have to either make it work or not make it work amongst yourselves and then.
Yeah, I think it was actually really helpful that no one knew about it for me actually in terms of like, and I'm sure you as well, like while we were, even when we were shooting, like we managed to get away with it until pretty late in the shoot. And it just, I think just not having that, being able to forget that external pressure of the expectations of what that return would be. And I think, I think was, I think helped the writing process and just the sense of freedom when we were on set. When did it hit you? That it was going to be today.
Today. He's back. Yeah, yeah. was gonna be big news. I I think it was when we got um Like paparazzi Saw us shooting in Manchester, and all these photos came out online.
And then we quickly announced that we were doing it. And I think that was the moment where I was like, I was like, oh, this is like, this is really happening. We knew it was probably coming. We did, we did. It's very hard not to recoil from that.
You have to, you know, especially you're working in a public space, in this case on the streets of a big city. You know that you're fair game. But nonetheless, even after all these years, inwardly uh you know i have to I'd have to You know, keep myself in check because I recoil from that, and that's not helpful when you're doing that work. You've got to remain open and free. I'm Jane Pauley.
Thank you for listening. And for more of our extended interviews, follow and listen to Sunday morning on the free Odyssey app. or wherever you get your podcasts. Tulsa is my home now. Academy Award nominee Sylvester Stallone stars in the Paramount Plus original series, Tulsa King.
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