Daniel Day Lewis
Daniel Day Lewis, pictured January 25, 2016 at the Arthur Miller - One Night 100 Years Benefit in New York City, the actor has announced his retirement from acting. Getty Images

Academy Award-winning actor Daniel Day-Lewis announced Tuesday that he is leaving the acting business for good.

The actor will appear in his last film ever "Phantom Thread," which is set to debut later this year. The news was confirmed by a representative of the actor to Variety. Day-Lewis will retire at the age of 60.

Leslee Dart, a spokesperson for the actor, offered a brief explanation regarding the "Lincoln" actor's retirement.

"Daniel Day-Lewis will no longer be working as an actor," Dart told Variety. "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."

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At this time, Day-Lewis himself has not released an official statement regarding his departure from acting. The actor's career lasted four decades, according to TMZ. He is the only actor that has three Oscar wins under his belt.

In light of Day-Lewis' retirement announcement, fans took to Twitter to share their thoughts. By Tuesday afternoon, Day-Lewis was a trending topic on Twitter.

Day-Lewis, who is the son of poet Cecil Day-Lewis and fellow actress Jill Balcon, made his first onscreen appearance in "Sunday Bloody Sunday" at 14 years old. Since then, he has been praised for his method acting efforts and diverse skill set as an actor.

During a 2005 interview on AMC's "Movies 101" hosted by New York University, Day-Lewis spoke with Profesor Richard Brown about his approach to method acting.

"A prevailing opinion in Britan is that I am mad...because of the way I work or because of the way they think I work," Day-Lewis began. "I follow my curiosity and it takes me all kinds of strange places, and I satisfy that curiosity as much as I can when I'm working. I do it for the simple reason that there are things I need to know and understand for my own sake if I feel like I'm going to take on the life of another man."

He has managed several incredible feats as an actor. Day-Lewis remained in a wheelchair for "My Left Foot" to play a character with cerebral palsy; he didn't bathe during the filming of "The Crucible"; he caught pneumonia while filming "Gangs of New York"; and he slept in an abandoned prison during the filming of "In The Name of the Father," according to ComingSoon.

"Every morning around five, [I listened to] the song 'The Way I Am,'" Day-Lewis told Rolling Stone in 2003 regarding his "Gangs of New York" preparation. "I've admired him for a while. I'm always on the lookout for music that might be helpful to a role. It bypasses the intellect in a particular way. With this film, I realized I was listening to Eminem more than usual."

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While the English actor is considered by many to be one of the greatest actors in the business, he is often known to wait years before working on another project. One of the biggest gaps in his career is timeframe between 1997s "The Boxer" and 2002s "Gangs of New York."

Therefore, fans have posited that Day-Lewis could take a hiatus for a few years before returning to the big screen. Jay-Z announced his retirement from music with "The Black Album" in 2003, but the rapper released his comeback song "Show Me What You Got" three years later.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, filmmaker Martin Scorsese "persuaded" Day-Lewis to come back to acting to appear in "Gangs of New York," a film he later went on to receive an Oscar nomination for. This role came after a five-year hiatus.

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