Day-Lewis bows out of acting, but why?

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

Now, Day-Lewis, 60, lauded by many as one of the best actors of his time, is leaving the film industry for good. Without providing any reasoning, Day-Lewis’ spokeswoman Leslee Dart confirmed in a statement that the actor is retiring.

“He is immensely grateful to all of his collaborators and audiences over the many years,” Dart said. “This is a private decision and neither he nor his representatives will make any further comment on this subject.”

His final film will be Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Phantom Thread,” which already has been filmed and will be released in December, according to The Associated Press.

Day-Lewis was nominated for an Academy Award five times and is the only person to have won the award for best actor three times — for the films “My Left Foot,” “There Will Be Blood” and “Lincoln.”

One of his generation’s most-skilled “method actors,” Day-Lewis has gone to extraordinary lengths to become his characters.

While playing a writer with cerebral palsy in “My Left Foot,” he never left his wheelchair and was spoonfed 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.

For “In the Name of The Father,” he spent nights sleeping in a jail cell. Before filming “The Crucible,” he built the home in which his character would live using 17th-century tools. Leading up to the 1997 film “The Boxer,” he trained as a fighter twice a day for almost three years.

And while filming the 2002 Martin Scorsese film “Gangs of New York,” he would occasionally walk around Rome, where the movie was filmed, and pick fights with strangers. “I had to do my preparation,” he told the Independent. “And I will admit that I went mad, totally mad.”

Day-Lewis has long had a home in Wicklow, Ireland. He is married to writer-director Rebecca Miller, daughter of American playwright Arthur Miller, and has three children.

In his acceptance speech for his 2013 Academy Award, Day-Lewis thanked his wife for having lived with “some very strange men” he had personified over the years.