Vicky Krieps can show disagreement with a glance and leave it there. We value the stubbornness she gives her characters, especially in Phantom Thread, where affection never obliges Alma to accept the terms she is offered.
Fi1m perspective
Vicky Krieps often lets a silence stand, giving us time to notice the resistance in a look. In Phantom Thread (2017), her Alma Elson admires the dressmaker Reynolds without becoming someone he can simply arrange to suit himself. She makes the admiration convincing, which matters as much as the stubbornness. We were absorbed by Alma because her love for Reynolds never seemed to cancel out her objections to him.
The supporting parts in Hanna (2011) and A Most Wanted Man (2014) came before Paul Thomas Anderson's Phantom Thread gave her an international breakthrough. Since then, she has moved between studio films such as Old (2021) and European independent work, including Bergman Island (2021) and Corsage (2022). She frequently plays women constrained by marriage, social expectations or their own bodies. Her understatement allows them to object without having to announce every grievance.
Anderson gives her room in Phantom Thread to be difficult without making Alma the sensible person sent to correct a selfish man. Opposite Daniel Day-Lewis, she is an equal presence, without having to advertise that equality. Lesley Manville's Cyril Woodcock matters here too: she has enough authority to ensure that this romance can never concern just two people. The enclosed setting sometimes feels airless; Krieps, Day-Lewis and Manville give us reasons to stay with people who can be hard company.
Mia Hansen-Løve's Bergman Island gives her Chris, a filmmaker negotiating creative and personal tensions, and makes good use of her silences. For Corsage, she wore a corset for sustained periods to play Empress Elisabeth of Austria, a physical commitment consistent with her attention to women living under constraint. The pace of Corsage can still be sleepy; an actor's concentration cannot do all the work of keeping a film moving. Start with Phantom Thread, and do not expect its lovers to make the evening comfortable.
Biography
Vicky Krieps is a Luxembourgish-German actress. She trained at the Conservatoire de Luxembourg and Zurich University of the Arts, and gained early stage experience at the Schauspielhaus Zürich.
Her breakthrough came with the role of Alma Elson in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Phantom Thread (2017). She has appeared in films including Hanna (2011), A Most Wanted Man (2014), Colonia (2016), Old (2021) and The Three Musketeers: D'Artagnan (2023). For her performance as Empress Elisabeth in Corsage (2022) she received the Un Certain Regard Best Performance prize at Cannes and the European Film Award for Best Actress.
She is also credited as Bridget Sullivan in the series Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story (2026).
