In the name of the daughter

Day-Lewis subsequently saw Miller's first feature, "Angela." He also starred in the 1996 film version of Arthur Miller's "The Crucible," during which he met the playwright's daughter in person. Day-Lewis, son of British poet laureate Cecil Day-Lewis and actress Jill Balcon, had a pedigree about as impressive as Miller's. He had previously dated Julia Roberts and had a son in 1996 with Isabelle Adjani. Miller described her pre Day-Lewis romantic life as "pretty checkered" and claimed that she had suffered from a marriage phobia. "If I put a ring on my ring finger, my finger would hurt," she said of her single days. But when she met Day-Lewis, in her early 30s, she had "lived a lot," and said she felt more comfortable committing to partnership. The two were married within a few months of meeting. Now married for eight years, they raise their sons Ronin, 6, and Cashel, 3, in Ireland and New York, where Ronin is enrolled in school.

After the couple had their children, they spent a year in Florence, where Day-Lewis turned away from acting for a time and went to work as a cobbler, and Miller published her novel, "Personal Velocity" (named a Washington Post best book of 2001), and made the subsequent movie, which earned her not only plaudits but also the freedom to make whatever she wanted -- "within reason" -- next. So she returned to "Jack and Rose" and told her husband that he was still her first choice for the lead. Miller said Day-Lewis considered it for a long time before agreeing. "Daniel's not really capable of doing anything simply as a favor," she explained.

Miller said the dynamics of their professional collaboration were, "easy, really. He was open and receptive and we quickly fell into step and respected each other's domains." Miller bristled when I asked about the power dynamics of directing her husband. "I think Daniel would accept the fact that I'm figuring out how to shoot a scene," she said shortly. She also said she doesn't coach performances. "I expect people to be the people when they arrive," she said, "not to create the performances on set. And Daniel arrives on set so filled up. I never got a sense of resistance."

"Look," she continued, still rankled by my power question, "directors have a certain job and actors have a certain job. It's very hard to define what a director does because it involves stuff like what color are the pillows, and the shot list. On the other hand, the director is doing something more ineffable, which is creating an atmosphere where an actor can do his best work. It's this contract of trust; I think it would be very weird to feel a power imbalance. I try to stay away from the concept of power. That doesn't mean I'm a pushover. But there has to be a gentleness, because you want to make everyone want to do their best work, not just the actors but the sound engineer."

"It's not that I'm always pleasant," said Miller. "But I try not to be unjust or randomly petulant."

This reminded me of how I needed to get back to a nagging question that involved her father. I went for it: As a woman who is known as the daughter of a famous man and the wife of a famous man, was it not a provocative decision to make a movie about an incestuous relationship between a father and a daughter and cast her husband as the father?

Miller's first reaction was to remind me, "It's not an incestuous relationship; there are overtones of incest." Then she paused and nodded. "Yes, it is probably provocative." She gave a little laugh and continued, "Daniel and I had conversations about it before we did it. At one point he said, 'Are you out of your mind? Why would we put ourselves through something like this?'"

But Miller liked the thrill of the creative gamble. "It seemed like a big risk, and something about that seemed right. It's a tiny accent on the film that makes it even more true." Wait, does that "tiny accent" mean that she intended for all the inevitable my husband, my father, my husband, my father stuff to weave itself into the film?

"Not really, no," said Miller, acknowledging that 16-year-old Rose "has parts of me: the ruthlessness and purity that a lot of girls that age have. She's a little bit scary and beautiful as she comes into consciousness about the power she has as a young woman." Indeed, Rose is scary as she tries to kill the woman sleeping with her father several times. As for her relationship to her own parents, Miller said only, "I was very close to both of them."

At the end of "Jack and Rose," Rose lives out some of her father's dreams in her own adulthood. I asked Miller about her next project, which is adapting her father's 1944 play, "The Man Who Had All the Luck," for the screen. It was a play that closed four days after its Broadway opening. Is Miller redeeming his work in some way? She looked slightly uncomfortable, and sad; it has, after all, been less than two months since Arthur Miller's death. "First of all, I'm adapting it, not directing it," she said. "And I did it so I could spend some time with him and have some conversations with him. Now I'll finish it because I said I would."

As for how her own story relates to Rose's, Miller said that she thinks the standard American ending for her film would have had the young heroine simply driving off, the implication being that getting away from the scene of one's youth is enough. But Miller said, "That's just not true. Whether we like it or not, we are connected to our parents, to their parents before them. We are part of a chain of human beings; we don't create ourselves. The idea that we can make a total break is an illusion. I think we all find that on some level we're continuing their work."

And does she mind that her identity will always be inextricably linked to the identities of those who came before her and to whom she is married?

"I don't ever think about that," said Miller. "I'm only aware of it because other people bring it up." Here she smiled at me, the person who just brought it up. The smile is a kind one. "It's just my life," she said. "I love who I love and I'm related to who I'm related to."

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