If you track Celebrity News like we do at HollywoodReviewz, Daniel Day-Lewis remains the gold standard for screen transformation—and the only performer with three Best Actor statuettes. Let’s answer the big fan questions, spotlight the mythic roles, and clarify his 2017 retirement and 2025 return.
What films did Daniel Day-Lewis win Oscars for?
Day-Lewis holds a record three Best Actor wins: My Left Foot (1989) as Christy Brown, There Will Be Blood (2007) as oilman Daniel Plainview, and Lincoln (2012) as the 16th U.S. president. Each performance shows total immersion, technical control, and emotional weight—and each sits at the center of its film’s identity.
What is Daniel Day-Lewis’s most iconic role?
Fans split into camps, and each camp brings receipts. Many point to Plainview in There Will Be Blood—a towering, unnervingly charismatic portrait of ambition. Others choose Abraham Lincoln for its intimacy and quiet power. A third camp rallies around Bill “The Butcher” Cutting in Gangs of New York, a ferocious folk devil who steals every scene. You can also make strong cases for Hawkeye in The Last of the Mohicans and Gerry Conlon in In the Name of the Father. If you crave one answer to “What is Daniel Day-Lewis’s most iconic role?” Plainview often wins the debate because the performance feels volcanic and surgical at once.
Why did DDL quit acting?
On June 20, 2017, Day-Lewis announced his retirement through longtime spokesperson Leslee Dart, who called it a “private decision.” He offered no further comment at the time.
Later that year, while promoting Phantom Thread, he explained that he hadn’t planned to retire before making the film and that the work left him “overwhelmed by a sense of sadness.” Those words fueled the fan question “Why did DDL quit acting?”—and they still frame the conversation around his decision. Read more about Celebrity News at HollywoodReviewz.
Retirement—and the return
Phantom Thread (2017) became the final film of his eight-year break and earned him another Oscar nomination.
In September 2025, Day-Lewis returned with Anemone, which premiered at the New York Film Festival. He stars in it, co-wrote it, and collaborated with his son Ronan Day-Lewis, who directed. Onstage, he joked that he’d “made a fool” of himself by announcing retirement and then coming back, and he said the chance to work with his son mattered more than sticking to the old decision. The film rolled into U.S. theaters on October 3, 2025, with wider expansion the following week. Read more about Anemone at HollywoodReviewz.
What the comeback tells us
Day-Lewis didn’t return to chase nostalgia. He returned to create—this time as part of a father-son team. That choice tracks with the values behind his 2017 step-back: protect the work, protect the process, and follow meaning over momentum. Whether you loved Anemone or not, the comeback underscores why his career still shapes serious cinema: he treats acting like a lived craft, not a celebrity performance.
The legacy that keeps growing
From My Left Foot to Lincoln, from Plainview to The Butcher, Day-Lewis shows how total commitment can feel both epic and intimate. He changed how actors research, how directors stage character, and how audiences define “great acting.” So when someone asks, “What films did Daniel Day-Lewis win Oscars for?” or “What is Daniel Day-Lewis’s most iconic role?” point them here. And when they ask, “Why did DDL quit acting,” add the full story: he stepped away in 2017 for personal reasons, then returned in 2025 to build something new with family—an artist choosing meaning, again.
Conclusion:
If you love Celebrity News but crave substance, use Day-Lewis as your compass. Rewatch the greats, pay attention to the micro-choices, and notice how each film breathes differently because he believed in it. And when someone asks, “What films did Daniel Day-Lewis win Oscars for?” or “What is Daniel Day-Lewis’s most iconic role?” you now hold the receipts. When they ask, “Why did DDL quit acting?” you can answer with clarity: he chose meaning over momentum, art over autopilot.
