Paul Thomas Anderson explains the common misconception about Daniel Day-Lewis
It’s rare that one of the most celebrated actors of any generation is someone the public barely knows a thing about, but Daniel Day Lewis is such a case.
Outside of the odd article dedicated to his outfits and the occasional red carpet or awards show appearance before he retired from acting in 2017, what was most known about Day-Lewis was the obvious: he was one of the most unbelievably powerful actors in living memory that brought an intensity to each role that he’d take, roles that seemed to assimilate his entire being while on screen.
It would be easy then to make assumptions about the way that Lewis would go about moulding his performances. Terms like ‘perfectionist’ and ‘method’ have often been rolled out whenever a new film of his was gracing cinemas, even to the point of frustration with his co-stars, in particular with 2017’s Phantom Thread, where Lewis plays disgruntled master dressmaker Reynolds Woodcock.
When watching Day-Lewis’ performance in the film, it’s easy to connect the driven craftsmen on screen with the man playing him: men obsessed with their passion and the pursuit of greatness at the expense of the people around them. However, according to long-time collaborator Paul Thomas Anderson, these assumptions would be misguided.
While doing press for Phantom Thread—a picture which would go on to win a slew of awards, including an astonishing six Oscars with ‘Best Actor’ and ‘Best Director’ going to Day-Lewis and Anderson, respectively–Anderson, when questioned on the subject of Lewis’s perceived quest for perfection of his craft pushed back against this notion, telling The Playlist that “perfection would be the wrong word to use because that’s not Daniel. I mean, I think he can be… he works hard. And that unfortunately gets translated into obsessive or perfectionist, but fuck, I’ve known him for a while, we’ve done two movies together and searching for perfection is certainly not what he is about.”
Anderson clearly reinforces this distinction between determination and passion for acting and losing yourself in a role to the point of madness. “This character (Woodcock) may be pursuing that and quite confused by it, but I will speak for Daniel and say, there’s no pursuit of perfection because that’s what a crazy person does. And maybe that’s what Reynolds is, but Daniel certainly isn’t that”.
As Andersen points out later in the same interview, the overwhelming presence of Lewis is intentionally used as a subterfuge to hide the fact that the film is more about Alma Elson, played by Vicky Krieps. Andersen stresses, “Look, the danger and great excitement of Daniel being in the film is that he’s a very, very strong presence and audiences are used to seeing him front and centre, but the reality of this film is that it’s something quite different. And sure, he’s in it and it revolves around this universe and house that Reynolds has created, but it’s Alma’s film. It starts with her and ends with her and she’s the one that guides us through it and that’s a very hard thing to describe to people if Daniel Day-Lewis is in the film.”
In a lot of ways, Phantom Thread is both a rumination on and a deconstruction of the concept of the “great man” that is often perpetuated around Day-Lewis and the idea of glorifying that kind of obsessive actor. Through the eyes of Alma, the viewer can follow Woodcock’s journey as a man who slowly, through his relationship with Alma, begins to leave aside that endless pursuit of unattainable perfection for the love and reliance that the two have found in each other, a suggestion that maybe this idea of a man’s worth being his obsession with his work above all else is one that should be left in the past.
