Daniel Day Lewis is chillingly adept at playing men with all-consuming obsessions. In Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood, Day-Lewis’s character was obsessed with money and power, and in their latest collaboration the central obsession is beauty. Here he portrays Reynolds Woodcock, a perfectionist couturier in 1950s London who creates dresses for movie stars, socialites and royalty. A confirmed bachelor, his life has room for nothing but his work. But then he meets the formidable Alma (the dazzling Vicky Kriebs), who becomes his muse, his model, his lover…and turns his life upside down. An extraordinary love story that unfolds as a thriller, with a delicious touch of the gothic, Anderson’s film is unpredictable and impeccably tailored. Day-Lewis, in what he has said will be his last role, bores as deep as only he can go into the psyche of a control-freak who, for the first time, finds himself losing control.

Director Paul Thomas Anderson