Actor Daniel Day-Lewis retires at 60 but doesn’t say why

For the select few films he starred in, the British actor would shed his own persona — or as he once said, “drain” himself — to become his character.

[...] over the course of his career, for months or even years at a time, he would retreat into a reclusive lifestyle, escaping the public eye and Hollywood altogether.

Without providing any reasoning, Day-Lewis’ spokeswoman confirmed in a statement to reporters Tuesday the actor is retiring.

[...] Day-Lewis is perhaps most known for being one of his generation’s most skilled “method actors,” adopting an immersive style of acting for which the late film star Marlon Brando was so revered, a raw style of acting that was “brash, bold and brimming with machismo,” as Angelica Jade Bastién wrote in the Atlantic.

[...] even the term “method acting” fails to capture the extent to which Day-Lewis has become his characters — physical and emotional extremes that few others have matched.

While playing a writer with cerebral palsy in “My Left Foot,” he never left his wheelchair and was spoon-fed by the film crew.

While preparing for “The Last of the Mohicans,” he lived off the land for weeks, hunting and skinning animals and even sleeping with his rifle, as the Guardian noted in a 2002 profile.

Before filming “The Crucible,” he built the home in which his character would live using 17th century tools.

While filming the 2002 Martin Scorsese film “Gangs of New York,” he caught pneumonia and insisted on only wearing a “threadbare” coat that would have existed in the 19th century, according to the Independent.

[...] he refused to break character throughout the filming of Abraham Lincoln, even signing off text messages with co-star Sally Field as “Abe.”

Day-Lewis is also notoriously selective in the films he chooses to participate in — he told the BBC he only accepts roles he feels he can truly service, intriguing characters with lives “the feel very far removed from my own.”