Vicky Krieps refused to put up with Daniel Day-Lewis’ method acting: “I wasn’t going to look at him in a special way”
Method acting is a controversial approach to the performance medium that has been both heralded and derided over the years, but you can’t say it hasn’t yielded results.
For Daniel Day-Lewis, method acting has helped him to secure various Oscar nominations (and three wins) throughout his career, which has made him one of the most revered performers of his generation. Yet, the star has come under fire various times for his rather bold approach to getting into character, something that he seems to have gotten away with on the grounds of his brilliance.
Yet, when you’re refusing to speak to people unless they address you in character or asking to be carried and spoon-fed your lunch, is that really acceptable? Day-Lewis might have won an Oscar for his performance as Christy Brown, a man with cerebral palsy, in My Left Foot, but to get there, he stayed in character, with people wheeling him around the set so that he could truly embody the disabled artist.
The actor has divided fans with his approach to acting, but there was one co-star who decided she wasn’t going to take such behaviour from him, and this on-set tension actually resulted in the perfect onscreen dynamic. Vicky Krieps, who starred opposite the actor in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Phantom Thread—Day-Lewis’ last role before he claimed to retire—didn’t know much about the actor before working with him, and she wasn’t about to bow down to the Oscar winner simply because he was a Hollywood star.
Talking to The Telegraph, Krieps revealed, “I never watch the films of people I’m going to work with, I don’t Google them. So I didn’t know so much about [Day-Lewis’] method acting. I am a person who thinks we are all equal. We all sit on the toilet. I could see it all like a circus. I just didn’t get afraid.”
Krieps knew that a female actor like herself wouldn’t be afforded the space to act the way Day-Lewis was allowed to, as she’d simply be labelled a diva. As filming went on, she became more resistant to the actor’s approach, and the tension subsequently mirrored the unusual relationship between their characters in the film: Reynolds, an uptight dress designer, and Alma, his increasingly rebellious muse.
“But after half the movie, I was just really tired of it. Like: OK, I get it. It’s a game. I’ve played it. But can we just talk normally now, please?” Krieps griped, adding, “In the scene where Alma complains about ‘you and your people and your walls and your rules…’, that was really me talking to a famous actor, saying: ‘Do you really need everyone around you to behave so strangely and talk in a whisper?’”
Krieps was adamant in her ways, and you could say that her non-compliance became part of the method acting, where the confrontational onscreen dynamic and off made for an unpredictably genuine performance outcome: “I decided I wasn’t going to look at him in a special way just because he’s Daniel Day-Lewis. He reacted to my feeling and played with that well. That dance became the movie, and in the end, it was a wonderful thing.”
Phantom Thread was incredibly well-received, and I’d argue it’s Anderson’s finest masterpiece. It inhabits a world of its own, simultaneously warm and nostalgic but also harbouring a dichotomic coldness that emerges from the push-pull relationship between Reynolds and Alma.
