Count Jennifer Lawrence out of the Phantom Thread fandom (phandom?). Though the Paul Thomas Anderson film, starring Daniel Day-Lewis as an elegant couturier in 1950s London, has been picking up fans left and right on the awards circuit, Lawrence simply couldn’t enjoy it. In an interview on Marc Maron’s podcast, the actress revealed that she barely watched the movie, shutting it off after realizing it hit way too close to home.
“I got through about three minutes of it,” she explained, before deciding to Marie Kondo the movie out of her life. “I put in a good, solid three. Oh my god, I couldn’t. I’m sorry to anybody who loved that movie. I couldn’t give that kind of time.”
Maron and Lawrence were chatting about the film because the comedian had asked her which actors she’d most like to work with. Gary Oldman and Day-Lewis immediately sprang to mind, Lawrence said, although the latter has announced that he is retiring after Phantom Thread. So, unless Day-Lewis is going full Method-meets-Inception and preparing for a secret upcoming movie about a famous Academy Award-winning actor retiring from the film world, that means Lawrence will probably never work with him. And based on her knee-jerk reaction to Phantom Thread, she’ll never see his swan song either.
Maron tried to convince Lawrence to watch the film anyway, saying he had the same sort of initial reaction to Mother!, Lawrence’s divisive drama directed by Darren Aronofsky.
“O.K., I’ll try it,” Lawrence replied, not sounding terribly convinced. “I mean, is it just about clothes? Is he kind of like a narcissistic sociopath, and he’s an artist, so every girl falls in love with him because he makes her feel bad about herself, and that’s the love story?”
Well . . . she’s not terribly off the mark. But there’s also more! Much as Maron tried serving as a hasty ambassador for Phantom Thread, though, his advocacy didn’t quite work.
“I’ve been down that road, I know what that’s like,” Lawrence continued. “I don’t need to watch that movie.”
To clarify, she quickly added that she wasn’t implying that Aronofsky—her ex-boyfriend as well as her Mother! director—was her own personal Reynolds Woodcock, though we’ve all heard stories about how difficult the Mother! set could be. Lawrence said she’s “dated people nobody knows about,” and spent a lot of time in the interview lavishing Aronofsky with praise, recounting the moment she fell for him (right after they met for the first time to discuss Mother!), admitting she pursued him for nine months and still loves him, and even texting him during the interview to poke fun at Maron, who had interviewed Aronofsky just a few months prior. Besides, Lawrence has worked with plenty of other filmmakers who might fit the Woodcock bill a bit better.
Get Vanity Fair’s HWD NewsletterSign up for essential industry and award news from Hollywood.Yohana DestaYohana Desta is a Hollywood writer for VanityFair.com.
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