Actress Vicky Krieps barely understands the fuss around the Hollywood awards circuit season.
The Luxembourgish actress is starring opposite Best Actor Oscar nominee Daniel Day-Lewis in Phantom Thread, one of this year’s biggest Oscar contenders with six nominations. It marks her first English language film, and has won the star critical acclaim and the attention of Hollywood.
However, the 34-year-old, who lives in Berlin with actor Jonas Laux and their daughter Elisa, is completely unfazed by the prospect of winning an Academy Award, something she’s never previously thought about.
“The Americans have a different perspective on things,” Krieps told British Vogue. “The whole awards thing, I have no clue (about). It’s something that’s so far away from me that I mostly don’t get what they’re talking about.”
On the subject of how she was cast in the movie, she explained that director Paul Thomas Anderson was impressed by her performance “in a small, independent” film and soon after got his casting director to contact her.
“The email was really short,” shrugged the actress, who has mainly starred in French and German productions. “It just said something about London. Paul’s name was probably somewhere on the email but I had always wanted to do something English so I just wanted to read the script. I put my audition on tape and sent it.”
In the movie she plays the waitress-turned-lover of couturier Reynolds Woodcock (Day-Lewis) who lives with his sister (Lesley Manville). The couple’s relationship veers between affection and distance until they finally learn to live with one another’s differences.
A starring role alongside three-time Oscar winner, and famed method actor Day-Lewis would be daunting for any actress, but Krieps found her own way of dealing with it.
“The truth is, it was like working with any other person,” she smiled. “For me not to be nervous I had to completely forget everything I knew about him so I just tried to be absolutely present.
“Then I met him for the first time in character and it was very scary and I had to deal with it on my own in my hotel room.”
