It is hard not to watch Phantom Thread and draw a parallel between Reynolds Woodcock, the obsessively focused designer, and Daniel Day-Lewis, the obsessively focused actor.
You can argue that Day-Lewis is just the actor, not the author of Phantom Thread, and that these similarities are coincidental.
Day-Lewis is as ferocious about protecting the details of his private life as he is about learning to play a nativistic gangster.
Those are the words of Daniel Day-Lewis, describing his imminent retirement from acting to The New York Times.