After Stint on the Farm, Daniel Day-Lewis Retires From Acting

Much to the collective relief of aspiring Best Actor Oscar nominees everywhere, Daniel Day-Lewis has mothballed his movie career.

The 60-year-old has announced his retirement from acting.

In a statement, Day-Lewis’ spokeswoman, Leslee Dart, confirmed the news, reports Variety: “Daniel Day-Lewis will no longer be working as an actor. He is immensely grateful to all of his collaborators and audiences over the many years. This is a private decision and neither he nor his representatives will make any further comment on this subject. ”

The actor made history in 2013 by winning a third Best Actor Oscar for his dramatic lead role in Steven Spielberg's "Lincoln."

He made more headlines a short time later when he reportedly told friends that he would take a five-year sabbatical from filming to spend time with his family and enjoy life on his 50-acre farm in Co Wicklow, south of Dublin. At the time, he was quoted as saying that he was interested in learning "rural skills" such as stonemasonry.

'I follow my curiosity'

Notoriously reclusive, he's known as one of the most selective actors in the industry, with only a handful of films since 1998 and a penchant for five-year gaps between roles. During one such stretch in the late '90s, Day-Lewis famously apprenticed as a shoemaker in Florence, Italy, studying under the late master cobbler Stefano Bemer.

"I was very happily out of the world of filmmaking," Day-Lewis said in a 2002 interview. "I was just happily working away at other things."

Day-Lewis has also admitted that his reluctance to talk about what he calls his "slothful periods" has created an "apparent rift between one world and the other." But he maintains that time off pursuing these personal interests and time with his family is what contributes to his transformative characters on screen.

"My life as it is away from the movie set is a life where I follow my curiosity just as avidly as when I am working," he told the U.K. Guardian in 2008. "It is with a very positive sense that I keep away from the work for a while. It has always seemed natural to me that that, in turn, should help me in the work that I do."

As for his rural lifestyle, far away from the glitz and lights of Hollywood — that too offers solace to help shape future roles.

"In a rural parish," he explains, "you become utterly unnoticeable. Or that's the impression I have. I couldn't work or get ready for a piece of work from a city base, from city life. I need deep, deep quiet and a landscape too that I can be absorbed into. So much of the work is in the process of aimless rumination in which things may or may not take seed."