1988 Happier times
Source: Lesley Manville and Gary Oldman Are Exes, and They’re Both Nominated for Oscars – Vogue
Lesley Manville
Lesley Manville on a life on screen, awards season and being an older woman in Hollywood
“You can have a lover at 60,” says the actress. “You don’t have to be shoved in a corner in a cardigan doing knitting”
Source: Lesley Manville on a life on screen, awards season and being an older woman in Hollywood
A sharp look, the slighest lift of an eyebrow… how Lesley became the boss of Day-Lewis
Grande dame of stage Lesley Manville tells our reporter about acting beside Daniel Day-Lewis in ‘Phantom Thread’, and playing an alpha-woman and femme fatal
On a grey, mid-winter day in London, Lesley Manville is dressed in cosy knits and tucked away on a couch in a hotel suite in Soho. Still delicately beautiful at 61, her blue eyes are bright, and her rich-beige hair is loose around her face.
It’s a strikingly different look to the one she sports in her latest film, the much-feted Phantom Thread, in which she plays the manager of a couture house in 1950s London. As Cyril Woodcock she is all figure-sculpting suits, bright red lips and an icy gaze that could freeze at 40 paces – a kind of proto-Anna Wintour, with a touch of femme fatale thrown in for good measure.
She is, in the film, a kind of exotic bird existing in a rarefied world. Most of her scenes take place inside The House of Woodcock, where she reigns supreme. Though it is her brother, Reynolds Woodcock, a creative genius with a controlling streak, who is the design talent, it is Cyril who rules the roost.
Cyril is a central figure in a film that deals, in many ways, with female power – both soft and not so soft. And her special kind of influence is evident in the control and restraint with which she plays the part. She doesn’t need to raise her voice. All it takes is [ . . . ] More: A sharp look, the slighest lift of an eyebrow… how Lesley became the boss of Day-Lewis
The Phantom Thread’s Lesley Manville Talks Range and Fragile Masculinity
Among the several delights in Paul Thomas Anderson’s consistently surprising new movie Phantom Thread is its incisive explication of how fragile masculinity can be. Daniel Day Lewis, in what he has announced will be his final film role, plays Reynolds, a couture designer in 1950s London, whose world is propped up by the fleet of women he employs. Along comes a muse, Alma (Vicky Krieps) who challenges his ritualistic way of life and teases out the fetishistic extents of his relationship with power. The trailer makes it look like some sort of a thriller, but Phantom Thread is a romance that is funny more often than not—of all the films in PTA’s oeuvre, it shares the most with 2002’s Punch-Drunk Love [ . . . ]
More: The Phantom Thread’s Lesley Manville Talks Range and Fragile Masculinity