In the hushed drawing rooms and hallways of the House of Woodcock, the obsessive fashion designer played by Daniel Day-Lewis goes about his business, alone even in a crowd.

But he has found someone. She is a new muse and lover, Alma, the tea shop waitress played by Vicky Krieps. She relishes spontaneity and parties and hiking; the designer, Reynolds Woodcock, does not. Their relationship is that of irresistible force and immovable object.

Part of the aesthetic pleasure afforded by writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Phantom Thread” lies in the swank fabrics and carefully tended 1950s settings surrounding the Day-Lewis character. A fiend for historical research, the thrice-Oscared star has spoken over the years about the spiritual exhaustion the acting profession lays on him, once a project’s finished. This time, he says, it’s time to call it quits. If so, it’s a pretty serious loss. The first time he and Anderson got together, for the eccentric 2007 epic “There Will Be Blood,” it resulted in what many consider the finest American film of the new century so far.

This week I caught up with Anderson, 47, as he was walking in New York City’s SoHo neighborhood to pick up his pants at a tailor shop, a few hours before picking up the National Board of Review award for best original screenplay. Anderson and his longtime partner, Maya Rudolph, have four children and live in Sherman Oaks, Calif.

Excerpts from our conversation:

Q: Daniel Day-Lewis has talked about the preparation and the writing of “Phantom Thread,” and how it was a lighthearted process with a lot of laughter between the two of you. And then, maybe typical for him, after shooting had finished he was profoundly sad and basically wanted to leave the profession.

A: Right. (laughs) Right. Well, I hope of course that it’s a temporary feeling of melancholy or exhaustion. It’s really hard for me to believe he’s not going to do it again. While we worked on this movie we had a lot of ideas we thought were funny, but then at some point we stopped laughing. What we were laughing at, initially, was the character’s own preposterousness. Just the kinds of things he’d say in a fight with Alma at the dinner table, for example. When he’s put in a corner he doesn’t want to be in, Reynolds starts fighting like a child. He’s ridiculous. But when you place the character in three dimensions, and have someone else there, a real person, Alma, those words change. They become mean. And that’s something else entirely, isn’t it?

Q: My favorite line in that regard is when he’s faced with Alma’s breakfast: “I’m admiring my own gallantry for eating it the way you’ve prepared it.”

A: Yeah. Yeah, that line is still funny to me.

Q: Also, I didn’t feel “Phantom Thread” was letting Reynolds off the hook, ever. I feel as though you’re well aware of just what a pill this guy is in some scenes.

A: Absolutely. A lot of the editing of the film became: How much of a (jerk) is too much of a (jerk)? It’s a tricky question when you have a character like this, who puts clear boundaries around himself, and announces that he will not change, and good luck to anyone who tries to change him. We really had to keep an eye on just how alienating he can be, and make sure we never tipped an audience into checking out.

Q: The counterweight to all that is the elegance of this man’s world.

A: The world these guys lived in … it was like factory showroom living. Everything looks straight out of a magazine, or a fairy tale. The martinis they get, they’re never without a coaster. That’s part of the theatrics of this world. It was like being on stage, and that was very good for our story. When our heroine comes in, real flesh and blood, she doesn’t want to behave like she’s in a play. And that’s when the story starts cooking.

Q: In the Directors Guild of America podcast you did with director Rian Johnson (“Star Wars: The Last Jedi”), you talked about the time you were laid up with the flu, at home, watching a lot of Turner Classic Movies. And that, indirectly, led to “Phantom Thread”?

A: People deal with illness in different ways. My initial response to getting sick is, (a) I’m angry, because I don’t want to be slowed down, I want to have all my wits about me. And (b), pretend I’m not sick and refuse any kind of help, because to admit I need help would be admitting I was sick. Anyway. I got sick. I stayed in bed for three days, and the movies I watched were really helpful: “Rebecca,” “The Story of Adele H.,” the old Jean Cocteau “Beauty and the Beast.” And I remember seeing how much my wife was enjoying having me relatively helpless. Then I started thinking, wouldn’t it kind of … suit her to keep me this way, you know, from time to time? (laughs)

(WARNING: SPOILERS BELOW)

Q: What I love about the first strategic poisoning in the film is that you don’t really know what Alma’s intentions are — if they’re lethal, or just punitive.

A: Exactly right (laughs). You, know, it’s just a thimbleful, so … we shot some good close-ups we ended up taking out that made her intentions a little clearer. She’s looking at the mushroom book and you see the words “not lethal,” and “extreme stomach pain,” that kind of thing.

(END OF SPOILERS)

Q: I know you considered David Lean’s “The Passionate Friends” to be a big influence on the movie, especially the New Year’s Eve scene and the scenes set in the Alps. I also caught more than a little Max Ophuls in the way you move the camera, and activate all these tight, claustrophobic physical locations.

A: Well, Ophuls is my hero when it comes to blocking the actors and blocking the camera and the dance they do together. He’s just the best. By the way, have you seen “The Post”? I’d say Steven Spielberg is as good with the camera as anybody in film history. I saw it the other day, and I couldn’t believe how good he is at dealing with a lot of people in that small a space. He’s got 10 people in a living room, and everybody’s moving around, and everything seems natural, and the camera’s dancing around them, and that thing is a miracle of staging and camerawork. I can’t wait to see it again, to really look under the hood and watch how he did it.

“Phantom Thread” opens in limited release Friday in Chicago.

Michael Phillips is a Tribune critic.

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