Yeah, once we started shooting. He comes to the set and he's Reynolds, and you just take that on board. I'm not fazed by that. It's not how I work. It wouldn't be healthy for me to do that, I wouldn't want to work like that. I've worked so much with Mike Leigh where you really do get into character. But the discipline with him has to be that you have your own antennae monitoring the improvisations that you're doing, because you need to debrief and talk about them with Mike afterwards. So you're in character but you can't wholly be in character. For my money, you can never wholly be in character—I can never lose Lesley completely. For me, that's my buzz about acting, that's what I love. I love to push myself right to the extreme, do characters that are really not like me, that are really different. My joy is, when I've done them, get the clothes off, put my clothes on, and I'm me. I need that. If I think of some of the characters I've played on stage and with Mike Leigh in films, if I took them home with me, I'd be ill. I couldn't do it.

But whatever gets you through the night. Daniel, for him, has to work the way he works, and I for me have to work the way I work. Really, it's a personal thing. Acting's hard enough. If you need something to get you through it or to help you to create it and see it through, it is fine by me.

When you were shooting “Phantom Thread,” was there ever a moment in the script that you challenged, as in, "Maybe this doesn't quite make sense for this character, how about we play or say it this way?"

Yes, and Paul was very open to that, and especially because he's not English. Sometimes, occasionally, and I can't give you an example, I remember saying to him, "That sentence you've written sounds a bit American," and he took it completely. I'm the official English person on set along with Daniel. So yeah, he took all of that, but there's no doubt about it, we did at times go off script. [It’s great] when you get good people [to work with.] I couldn't wait for my days to begin on that film, to go in and work with Paul and Vicky and Daniel, to really properly collaborate with them and create this extraordinary film. I loved walking through those doors at 5:30 in the morning and just thinking, "Right, okay, great." We'd go in, sort of talk through the scene, and then we'd all go and get ready and we'd come back, and there we'd all be in these wonderful outfits. Cyril would be Cyril and Reynolds would be Reynolds. It was wonderful.

I was talking to Mark Bridges recently. He was surprised when I started our chat by asking him about your wardrobe as opposed to some of the ‘House of Woodcock' designs. The tailoring was exquisite and you carried them so well.

I love Mark Bridges and our costume fittings were nothing short of delightful. We had many of them and they would last four, five hours each time. This process started many months before we started shooting. When I first met him, he'd been to Rome, Paris, New York, Los Angeles, London, buying vintage clothes, originals. So we were trying on all these things, looking at shapes, and I thought, "Oh yeah, these clothes are great, just need a bit of TLC.” Little did I know that that was just to look at stuff on me, to take photos, show to Paul, see what we think. Everything after that was designed by Mark and made for me to such a high level of couture. There were women in the film who play the seamstresses, the two older ones. They did work with Hardy Amies back in the '50s, and they now work at the Victoria and Albert Museum in the archive, looking after old clothes. So they came in to advise us, but they ended up being in the film as well.