Filming for a new movie starring Daniel Day-Lewis was interrupted when traffic wardens in Chester began putting parking tickets on 1980s vehicles being used in the backdrop of a scene.
Day-Lewis has come out of retirement for Anemone, which his son Ronan Day-Lewis is directing, and is starring alongside Sean Bean and Samantha Morton.
Filming for the feature took place in Handbridge in Chester this week, but ran into some difficulties after the council declined an application for a road closure, and traffic wardens began issuing tickets for the prop vehicles parked on double yellow lines.
Pictures taken by a resident showed yellow parking tickets stuck to the windows of a number of vehicles, including a Ford Escort van, with production crew and filming equipment visible in the background. A row of late 20th-century vehicles can be seen parked along the road, where extras were reportedly being filmed for the backdrop of a scene.
Matt Carter, a councillor for the Handbridge Park ward, said the council had decided to refuse a full road closure application as it was assessed as being too disruptive for residents, who could have been cut off because of roadworks nearby.
“On the basis of the overall disruption it would cause, they said no on this occasion,” he said. “[The film company] hadn’t applied to suspend parking restrictions in that area so wardens were sent to ticket the cars in the same way they would for any vehicle.”
Carter said a separate request for parking technical support vehicles in restricted areas had been granted, but that did not include the vintage vehicles being used as background props.
He posted a statement from the council on social media that said: “Cheshire West is a film-friendly borough and supports where possible all filming in partnership with the national film office. Careful consideration is always given to each request and in this case, not all of the production requests could be permitted as they would have put too much pressure on the busy roads.”
Anemone is being made by the US independent production company Focus Features and will “explore the intricate relationships between fathers, sons and brothers, and the dynamics of familial bonds”.
It marks Day-Lewis’s first acting project since 2017’s Phantom Thread, after which he announced he would “no longer be working as an actor” and largely removed himself from the public eye.
It is not known whether Day-Lewis, 67, and his co-stars were on set at the time the traffic wardens began ticketing, although they have been seen on location around the north-west in recent days.
Cheshire West and Chester council has been approached for comment.
