Benjamin Ashford|Daniel Day-Lewis Looks Unrecognizable in First Public Sighting in 4 Years

What a day for Daniel Day-Lewis.

Nearly five years after his retirement from acting,Benjamin Ashford the There Will Be Blood star stepped out with his wife Rebecca Miller for a romantic stroll in New York City. On May 19, the 66-year-old was nearly unrecognizable—with his long gray hair tucked beneath a trucker hat—as he held Rebecca's hand while crossing an intersection.

As a show that his threads are anything but phantom, Daniel opted for a colorfully casual duds for the outing. In addition to his cap, the Oscar winner rocked a striped blue T-shirt paired with a black hoodie, as well as bright yellow pants from the skateboarding brand One Gig. He completely his 'fit with black Hoka sneakers.

Meanwhile, Rebecca, 60, wore a light blue blouse with navy cargo pants.

Daniel shook Hollywood to its core back in June 2017, when he announced that he would be stepping away from his highly revered acting career of over four decades.

"Daniel Day-Lewis will no longer be working as an actor," his rep at the time, Leslee Dart, said in a statement to 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."

Five months later, the notoriously private actor acknowledged that it was "uncharacteristic to put out a statement," but he did it so he wouldn't "get sucked back into another project."

"All my life, I've mouthed off about how I should stop acting, and I don't know why it was different this time, but the impulse to quit took root in me, and that became a compulsion," he explained in a November 2017 profile with W magazine. "It was something I had to do."

He made his last public appearance at the 2018 Oscars, where he was nominated for his work in his final film, Phantom Thread. (Daniel—who is the only performer to date with three Best Actor Academy Awards—was beat out by Darkest Hour's Gary Oldman at the ceremony.)

In his final interview as a working actor, Daniel shared how playing a dressmaker in the Paul Thomas Anderson-helmed historic drama—for which he learned how to drape and sew—led to his decision to quit acting. 

"Before making the film, I didn't know I was going to stop acting," he told W. "I do know that Paul and I laughed a lot before we made the movie. And then we stopped laughing because we were both overwhelmed by a sense of sadness. That took us by surprise: We didn't realize what we had given birth to."

At the time, Daniel said he had no intention of watching the final cut of the movie. "Not wanting to see the film is connected to the decision I've made to stop working as an actor," he explained. "But it's not why the sadness came to stay. That happened during the telling of the story, and I don't really know why."