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Pity nepo parent Daniel Day-Lewis. Is he just another dad who can't say no?
The Observer
|August 10, 2025
What happens when the nepo debate inconveniently attaches itself to someone whose work you respect? There's excitement about triple Oscar winner Daniel Day-Lewis returning to acting to star in the film Anemone.
It will be the first time since the actor retired in 2017 after Paul Thomas Anderson's Phantom Thread (he also retired in 1997 to train as a cobbler). Maybe the reason Day-Lewis is involved - also co-writing - is that Anemone is the directorial debut of his son, Ronan. There it parps, the nepo-klaxon, and it would be hypocritical to ignore it. It can’t be unbridled scorn for Brooklyn Beckham alone flexing the family name and a wave-through for others. I'm not dismissing Ronan, a Yale art graduate. I loved the 2009 film Moon, by David Bowie's son, Duncan Jones. Nevertheless, Ronan would have been unlikely to get this opportunity without his connections. A big “dad” move from Day-Lewis too: the instinct to help his child seemingly propelled him out of retirement.
This story is from the August 10, 2025 edition of The Observer.
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