Daniel Day-Lewis looks unrecognizable on his first public sighting in four years

What a day for Daniel Day-Lewis.

Nearly five years after retiring from acting, the There Will Be Blood star took a romantic stroll through New York City with his wife, Rebecca Miller. On May 19, the 66-year-old was almost unrecognizable – his long gray hair tucked under a trucker hat – as he held Rebecca’s hand as he crossed an intersection.

To show that his attire is anything but phantom, Daniel opted for a colorful leisure suit for the outing. In addition to his hat, the Oscar winner wore a striped blue t-shirt paired with a black hoodie and bright yellow pants from skateboard brand One Gig. He perfects his look with black Hoka sneakers.

Rebecca, 60, meanwhile, wore a light blue blouse with dark blue cargo pants.

Daniel rocked Hollywood in June 2017 when he announced he was retiring from his much-revered acting career that had spanned over four decades.

“Daniel Day-Lewis will no longer be an actor,” his spokeswoman at the time, Leslee Dart, said in a statement to Variety. “He is extremely grateful to all of his staff and audience over the many years. This is a private decision and neither he nor his representatives will comment further on the matter.”

Stars leaving Hollywood

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Five months later, the notoriously private actor admitted it was “uncharacteristic to make a statement,” but he did it to “not get dragged back into another project.”

“All my life I’ve talked about quitting acting and I don’t know why this time was different, but the impulse to quit took hold of me and it became a compulsion,” he explained in a November 2017 profile with W Magazine. “It was something I had to do.”

REAR GRILLE

His last public appearance was at the 2018 Oscars, where he was nominated for his work in his latest film, Phantom Thread. (Daniel — the only actor to date to have won three Best Actor Oscars — was beaten at the ceremony by Darkest Hour’s Gary Oldman.)

The story goes on

In his most recent interview as a working actor, Daniel shared how his role as a dressmaker in the Paul Thomas Anderson-directed historical drama – where he learned to drape and sew – led to his decision to quit acting.

“Before I did the movie, I didn’t know I was going to stop acting,” he told W. “I know that Paul and I laughed a lot before we did the movie. And then we stopped laughing because we were both overwhelmed by a feeling of sadness. That surprised us: we didn’t know what we had given birth to.”

At the time, Daniel said he had no intention of watching the final cut of the film. “Not wanting to see the film has to do with the decision I made to stop acting,” he explained. “But that’s not why the sadness continued. It happened while the story was being told, and I don’t really know why.”

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