carpenters3:

Krieps’s performance as Alma is both intimate and revealing, but the character is ultimately somewhat of a mystery—in the end, we know everything about her moods and attitudes, but almost nothing about her background or biography. The actress says this level of removal was intentional. Given minimal details by Anderson—he told her only that Alma was an immigrant survivor of World War II who had been tasked with taking care of her family after her mother’s death—Krieps was given the freedom to build an entire inner life from there. “When we come into this story, Alma is already kind of integrated into English society, so this means there must have been a process of assimilating—and I took her character from there,” she explains. “I think this is maybe why it felt like a marathon, because everything that Alma was encountering meant so many things at once, yet she was always restrained so she could never show it.”

Day-Lewis is famous for his intense Method acting, but Krieps says she went in the other direction to understand Alma, bringing palpable honesty and vulnerability to her portrayal. “I knew that there was no way that I could get close to this, so I kind of unprepared,” she explains. “I tried to forget what I know about acting to be completely empty and innocent and open to moments of awareness.”

An admitted tomboy growing up, she did, however, research deeply the world of midcentury couture, reading autobiographies by Dior and Balenciaga and watching Pathé clips of fashion shows from the era on YouTube. She befriended a fashion designer in Berlin, where she has lived for years, and even walked for her during Berlin Fashion Week to prepare for a pivotal scene in which Alma models two extravagant dresses during one of Reynold’s fashion shows. (She laughingly recounts the audience’s shock when she burst into a large smile on the runway.) “I didn’t know anything about dresses and all of this, so that was my biggest fear in the whole movie, knowing that I would have to wear those dresses and walk like a lady and behave like a woman,” she recalls. “I really worked most on her body language because I knew I couldn’t express her otherwise. For me, everything plays on the body language and maybe this is why you have a feeling you know her in the end although you don’t.”

“It sounds weird, but it was clear right away even for me,” she says of her affinity to Alma. “I could connect with her words and lines and they immediately felt familiar. I also immediately had a voice in my head of how she would speak. I think I could feel in this person something honest and pure, which I’m always looking for. I was fascinated by her because on one hand, she seems patient and almost submissive, but on the other hand, very individual and strong-willed, and this mix was very interesting to me.”

vicky krieps interviewed by jonathan shia for the last magazine, dec 2017