Like no other filmmaker, Paul Thomas Anderson has chronicled the dysfunctional glories of his hometown, the San Fernando Valley (“Boogie Nights,” “Magnolia,” “Punch-Drunk Love”), and state (“There Will Be Blood,” “Inherent Vice,” parts of “The Master”).

His latest feature “Phantom Thread,” however, not only sees a major location shift to 1950s England, but a more deeply interiorized approach to his favorite subject: people who can’t cope well with others.

And it’s about high fashion. Daniel Day-Lewis, whom Anderson directed to an Oscar in “Blood” and who claims he is retiring after this, plays an acclaimed designer, Reynolds Woodcock, who runs a very lucrative business for wealthy women with his sister Cyril (Lesley Manville) out of his elegant London home. She helps make sure that her genius brother’s orderly creative routine is not interrupted and the many models-or-whatever Reynolds dawdles with don’t stay around long (that’s the way he likes it).

Daniel Day-Lewis stars as “Reynolds Woodcock” and Vicky Krieps stars as “Alma” in writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson’s PHANTOM THREAD, a Focus Features release. Credit : Laurie Sparham / Focus Features

Writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson on the set of his upcoming release PHANTOM THREAD, a Focus Features release. Credit : Laurie Sparham / Focus Features

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Actor Daniel Day-Lewis (left) and writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson (right) discuss a scene on the set of the upcoming release PHANTOM THREAD, a Focus Features release. Credit : Laurie Sparham / Focus Features

Vicky Krieps (right) stars as “Alma” in writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson’s PHANTOM THREAD, a Focus Features release. Credit : Laurie Sparham / Focus Features

Vicky Krieps stars as “Alma” and Daniel Day-Lewis stars as “Reynolds Woodcock” in writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson’s PHANTOM THREAD, a Focus Features release. Credit : Laurie Sparham / Focus Features



Lesley Manville (left, seated) stars as “Cyril Woodcock” and Vicky Krieps (right) stars as “Alma” in writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson’s PHANTOM THREAD, a Focus Features release. Credit : Laurie Sparham / Focus Features

Vicky Krieps stars as “Alma” and Daniel Day-Lewis stars as “Reynolds Woodcock” in writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson’s PHANTOM THREAD, a Focus Features release. Credit : Laurie Sparham / Focus Features

Lesley Manville stars as “Cyril Woodcock” in writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson’s PHANTOM THREAD, a Focus Features release.

Daniel Day-Lewis stars as “Reynolds Woodcock” in writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson’s PHANTOM THREAD, a Focus Features release. Credit : Laurie Sparham / Focus Features

Lesley Manville stars as “Cyril Woodcock” in writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson’s PHANTOM THREAD, a Focus Features release.



But when he brings back a foreign waitress he’s met on a brief vacation, Alma (Luxembourg-born actress Vicky Krieps), her deceptively strong will upsets not only the house’s rhythm but Reynolds’ formerly impregnable self-possession.

Still a proud Tarzana resident, Anderson, now 47, acknowledges that “Phantom Thread” is necessarily kind of different from his 20-year-old porn business masterpiece “Boogie Nights” and much that he’s done since. But it’s still 100 proof PTA, with all the intelligence, bold individuality and unique mischief that implies.

Q: This was different.

PTA: It’s always a goal to not repeat yourself in some way. It’s always a goal to face new challenges, get out and do something new. I had confidence to go to another place at this point.

Once you get into [the subject] too, I have to say . . . I bet you probably had as much interest in fashion as I did, which is very little. And still, some of it’s a little fraught. But when you get under it, and you can see a jacket and somebody’s talking to you about construction and how hard it is to make it, or just to make a T-shirt, this is delicate work and it’s kind of cool.

Q: So how was working in England?

PTA: It was not the Valley! It was great, though. It was all of the things that you’d expect: it was cold, it was damp and it was dark. There had been warnings from people here like, Oh, you’ve got to be careful because the English electricians are really cranky, but none of those things came true. I worked with the most amazing, lovely, sweet, creative, funny people. Access to actors? Bottomless pit of great people. Super easy shooting out in the Yorkshire countryside. They’re welcoming, lovely. Cotswolds the same thing. Center of London, they do not give a f— about film at all, and actively kind of tried to dissuade you from doing anything that they were not used to. Which was OK, we worked around it.

Q: Most of the film takes place in one house, fortunately. It’s like a gothic romance, “Wuthering Heights” or “Rebecca,” exploded and reconfigured from the inside out.

PTA: That idea of it being contained in one house was always on our mind. The downside of this is that it could become a filmed play. That’s not good, it becomes claustrophobic in a bad way and it just becomes kind of like f-ing “Masterpiece Theatre.” We were consciously trying not to do that, always tried to be aware of giving it some scope and some scale, getting outside enough. But at the same time you want to . . . like these great films we all love and were looking at, they’re tightening the screws and they’re staying within a house where the walls keep closing in. At its best, in our theories, it was gonna be that.

Q: Reynolds is as self-contained and civilized as “There Will Be Blood’s” Daniel Plainview was nasty and aggressive – except when Reynolds isn’t.

PTA: I see Reynolds as overdeveloped. Uses words as weapons, he just seems to be barely tolerating the rest of this world. He’s somewhere between need and disdain, and the ego as well. Reynolds is like, “Everybody’s going to love me, or they better.” Certainly, there’s a kind of self-possession that’s similar to Plainview’s, an attack on the world. One is dirty and muddy and the other is refined and kind of lush.

Q: How do you build such essentially different characters with Daniel Day-Lewis?

PTA: There are conversations that you have about the practicalities of the job that he makes, which occupies a large volume of the research. Which is good, because the more intimate stuff that’s coming out for the story, that’s for us to talk about in a way that usually reflects on your life. You sort of ask yourself about people you know, relationships that you are in. But they probably occupy a smaller part because we know they’re intimate and they’re going to be played out in the film. So you busy yourself with something else that can really occupy the day, which is learning to sew, learning as much as you can about the world historically, that kind of stuff.

If you spend all day – or, really, years – digging deep into matters of the heart, you’re gonna just drive yourself f-ing mad. So leave that for the playing field.

Q: Understood. So what did you do to Daniel, then, that made him want to quit acting?

PTA: Maybe it was Lesley Manville that did something, maybe I’ll blame her! I can only hope that he reconsiders this decision. And I’m kind of pretending it’s not existing, because if it’s true, there’s gonna be a real sense of sadness for me that I won’t be able to work with him again. I’ll be happy that I’m friends with him, but it will always nag at me.

So I’m, like, pushing that off. There’s probably a part of me that’s trying not to take it too seriously, although, if I’m honest, I’m scared that it is true.

Q: Why did you choose relative unknown Vicky Krieps to play Alma?

PTA: Look at her! You saw it. You would have made the same decision. Taking nothing away from a lot of young actresses that are out there, these audition tapes come in and there she was. Tick! Very, very clear that she was our girl. Vicky had a kind of power inside her, obviously, that you don’t instantly see in her face. She can genuinely look as if she worked in a kind of falling-down hotel, serving tea. But put her hair up and pull it back, and she is the most stunning thing you’ve ever seen in those dresses. Adding to that, she’s got the chops, and she can stick her chin right up next to Daniel’s and not back down. And there’s a little bit of a Joan Fontaine thing in there.

Q: About those dresses . . . Gorgeous, of course, and tactile in a way I can’t ever recall seeing on film.

PTA: Of course we shot it in 35 mm. You’ve maybe seen documentaries about it, backstage at a fashion show before. There’s kind of a rush to it, when in fact the majority of that work is just so quiet and so still. Very uncinematic to a certain extent, there’s nothing car-chasey about it. But it’s really exciting, very zenlike, very quiet. You hear the sounds of thread and needle going through. It’s a very small sound, but cumulatively all over a room, it has this really haunting feel to it.

Q: It looks like you put as much work into making the costumes as lighting them.

PTA: Tons, tons. I can’t tell you the amount of film we shot, just testing the fabrics and looking at ways to light fabric, looking at ways the light caught the fabric and lace. It did your head in after awhile, you got blurry-eyed. We were always consciously trying, knowing that you have this magnificence and elegance in front of you, to counter it a little bit. We were embracing something that was slightly washed-out, slightly antique, quite frankly sometimes so that the beauty and the colors of these dresses wouldn’t overwhelm you; it can turn into Technicolor, then you’re losing the plot. So we were super aware that we can’t start piling chocolate on top of chocolate. That can be sour.

Q: Watched “Boogie Nights” again for the 20th anniversary a few months ago and, boy, does it ever hold up.

PTA: I’ve been wanting to sit down and watch that film again. I’ve got a film print of it. I’ve been really wanting to take that stroll down Memory Lane, but I just haven’t had the opportunity. Once I get through this, in the new year I’ll probably sit down and go, “What was that?” I can’t wait to see it again.

Q: It was pretty adrenalized, as I recall you were too at the time it came out. How does “Phantom Thread” reflect the man you’ve grown into since 1997?

PTA: Is it a movie I could have made at 27? Nooo, I don’t think so. This will always be the movie that I wrote when I was this age at this time. Certainly, there are conversations that happen between this man and this woman in this relationship that I would not have seen coming 20 years ago, that you probably have had with anyone you’ve been in a relationship with long enough. So it really is something that could only have come out after a certain amount of miles have been logged, I would guess.

And I know. Well, maybe not the same exuberance, but I still have that same boyish charm.