Not only did Ronan Day-Lewis get to work with the world’s greatest actor in his feature directorial debut, but he also had the support of its greatest director.
While he shares a close bond with both artists, his relationship with the former is more obvious: The 27-year-old’s first film, Anemone, stars his dad, the previously retired, three-time Oscar winner Daniel Day-Lewis, who co-wrote the script with his son. The film marks the actor’s first onscreen appearance since 2017’s Phantom Thread.
But it turns out Ronan also found support from another master of his craft.
When asked if he sought advice from any of his dad’s former collaborators, the filmmaker reveals to Entertainment Weekly that none other than Steven Spielberg, who directed Daniel in Lincoln, took a special interest in the project.
“This is pretty crazy, but I got to talk a bit with Steven Spielberg, who’s a family friend,” shares the director, who can’t help but smile at this good fortune. “He checked in a couple of times, and he was really, really supportive, and we talked through things. He was asking like, ‘What lenses are you using?’ and stuff like that.”
Ronan Day-Lewis and Daniel Day-Lewis.
John Nacion/Variety via Getty
He adds, “It was pretty amazing to check in like that after a week of shooting. Obviously, he is a hero to me.”
That technical support meant the world to the young filmmaker, who had been working on the script for Anemone alongside his dad for years before it came time to decide which lenses to use. Daniel and Ronan joined forces on the project when they realized they both had a desire to make a film that would follow two brothers and explore the role that silence plays in their fraught relationship.
“Years ago, way before we ever talked about doing anything together, I had this idea of wanting to write something about brotherhood. I have two brothers, and the archetype of that relationship was something I was really interested in, but I couldn’t really figure out the way in,” Ronan explains.
“Then, when my dad and I started talking about doing something together, we couldn’t really land on something. And then it turned out that he had separately had this inclination to do something about brothers. That was a lightning rod for us,” he adds.
Anemone stars the elder Day-Lewis as Ray, a former soldier who reunites with his estranged brother Jem (played by Sean Bean) after living in self-imposed exile for 20 years deep in the woods of Northern England. Samantha Morton, Samuel Bottomley, and Safia Oakley-Green round out the small cast.
If his dad and Spielberg weren’t enough, Ronan also had the benefit of an open line to award-winning filmmaker and novelist Rebecca Miller, who directed his dad in The Ballad of Jack and Rose — and who also happens to be his mother.
Sean Bean and Daniel Day-Lewis in ‘Anemone’.
Courtesy of Focus Features
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“I was so nervous about working with actors in general because my background is more in visual art. I’ve been doing film stuff for a while in terms of making short films and music videos and writing scripts, but it just felt like such a massive leap in terms of working with actors,” Ronan explains.
“There were a lot of different pieces of advice she gave, but I think in general, she was always encouraging me to follow my instincts, and it was comforting in a way that she would be like, there’s no right way to do it. Like, no one knows how to do it. There isn’t a magical recipe in terms of how to approach these things,” he adds with a laugh.
“She was just always really encouraging me to believe in my own intuition about every aspect of it, but especially the ones that I was most kind of intimidated by. So that was really great. We had many, many conversations about every aspect of it.”
See the result of a true family affair when Anemone hits theaters this weekend.
