Daniel Day-Lewis makes rare appearance in New York for final film 'Phantom Thread'

Patrick Ryan | USA TODAY

Show Caption Hide Caption 'Phantom Thread' tells a haunting love story 'Phantom Thread' follows the tumultuous love story of a 20th-century dressmaker.

NEW YORK — Daniel Day-Lewis is taking a stylish final bow with Paul Thomas Anderson's Phantom Thread.

The 60-year-old actor, dressed down in jeans and a short-sleeve plaid shirt over a white tee with buzzed hair, made a rare appearance Sunday night at the first East Coast screening for the 1950s-set fashion drama (in theaters Christmas Day), which is billed as his final role.

Unsurprisingly, the three-time Oscar winner — looking svelte amidst speculation about his health — didn't address his shocking retirement announcement last June, when his representative released a statement saying that he "will no longer be working as an actor" for reasons Day-Lewis hasn't elaborated on.

Instead, the post-screening Q&A at DGA Theater stuck specifically to the film, which reunites Day-Lewis with Anderson a decade after 2007's There Will Be Blood, for which he won his second best-actor Oscar as imperious oil tycoon Daniel Plainview.

Phantom needles a tense romance between sharp-tongued dressmaker Reynolds Woodcock (Day-Lewis), who runs an eminent London fashion house with his sister (Lesley Manville), and enchanting waitress Alma (Vicky Krieps), who becomes Reynolds' muse but finds herself vying for his attention.

“Paul just needed an old man and I fit the bill.” Daniel Day-Lewis on how he got involved with PHANTOM THREAD. pic.twitter.com/FftTTyFCWH — Patrick Ryan (@PatRyanWrites) November 27, 2017

Although reviews and social-media reactions to Phantom are embargoed until Dec. 7, Day-Lewis is widely predicted to earn his sixth Oscar nomination for his performance by pundits on awards site Gold Derby. Other possible contenders include costume designer Mark Bridges, composer Jonny Greenwood and Luxembourg actress Krieps.

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Anderson says he was inspired to write the script while laying in bed with his longtime companion, Saturday Night Live veteran Maya Rudolph.

"I was very, very sick one night and my wife looked at me with a love and affection I hadn't seen in a long time," Anderson remembered. "So I called Daniel the next day and said, 'I think I have a good idea for a movie.' "

In reality, "Paul just needed an old man and I seemed to fit the bill," Day-Lewis joked.

To prepare for the movie, they researched European designers such as Cristóbal Balenciaga and dove into the histories of Paris and London couture after World War II.

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"Paris was the dominant world, but there were also really interesting designers working in England," Day-Lewis said. "It felt that the work should reflect a sense of the history of England, and the fabrics that come from the British Isles. That was kind of a hope: that Woodcock's world would be reflected both in the design and the quality of the fabrics, and the place that he comes from."

Phantom is an ode to Alfred Hitchcock's 1940 romantic thriller Rebecca, and explores similar themes of love and obsession. But it's also about the "need for another person: a need that we sometimes feel we don't need, even though we do," Anderson said.

And while fashion is certainly front and center in the story, "it could've been (any other profession) in the creative world," Day-Lewis added. "(We're) trying to understand the relationships through that world, but the work itself is immaterial."