How Vicky got to grips with Daniel Day-Lewis
VICKY KRIEPS had heard about Daniel DayLewis’s technique of immersing himself in any character he plays. But she revealed that, if anything, she underprepared for her role opposite the Oscar-winner, as a waitress in a seaside town who is catapulted into the post-war world of high fashion.
‘How do you meet someone like him?’ Krieps wondered when we spoke about her starmaking turn in Paul Thomas Anderson’s sublime film Phantom Thread, which features Day-Lewis as Reynolds Woodcock, a gifted but highly-strung designer who runs a Belgravia salon with his sister Cyril (played with aplomb by Lesley Manville).
‘You can’t outdo him,’ she sighed, of her co-star.
Krieps, a native of Luxembourg, is a big name in German-speaking cinema and has appeared in Englishlanguage films A Most Wanted Man and Hanna, but is still a relative unknown in Britain.
The director and DayLewis wanted a ‘clean face’ for the role of Alma, who bewitches Reynolds when she successfully serves him his (complicated) breakfast order in a tea room.
‘Making the movie was the best education on England,’ Krieps told me. ‘Learning about all the tea drinking; and what you eat; and what you don’t eat; and what you wear!
‘The England of the Fifties is really a study of the English traditions.’
She had to learn to sew, too; taking lessons in how to handle fabrics and working alongside the real- life seamstresses featured in the picture. ‘That was fascinating,’ she said, ‘because I was never into fashion in my life!
‘I made Alma as prim and proper as possible; and also I tried to be as blank as a sheet of white paper,’ she explained. The idea was to free herself from any contemporary trappings.
Krieps also wanted to try out a few of the dishes her character serves Woodcock. ‘I did do a Welsh rarebit. I so wanted to know what it is! I found a recipe; I made it; I ate it; and I liked it,’ she told me, adding that she found Worcestershire sauce a revelation.
She and Day-Lewis are breathtaking in Phantom Thread; and I was gripped by the battle of wills that develops between them. ‘Alma tames the dragon,’ she said.
The first time they met was on set. I observed that her cheeks are flushed in the tea room scene. ‘The first time I saw him in the eye was in the restaurant and yes, you see me going red. It was nerves.’
She said making the film was ‘emotionally intense’, but she became good friends with the seamstresses. ‘It was like a gift, talking to those women.’
Day-Lewis announced his retirement from acting after the film was shot (‘it was a surprise to me,’ she said).
But Ms Krieps looks like she’s got a long career ahead of her. She’s appearing in a television mini-series based on the acclaimed German U-boat film Das Boot; and is also being bombarded with Hollywood scripts.