Daniel Day-Lewis moved into Camden’s Fitzroy Square for 20 film days to shoot Phantom Thread

Daniel Day-Lewis moved into Camden’s Fitzroy Square for 20 film days to shoot Phantom Thread, which opens on Christmas Day.

Day-Lewis now says this was his last acting role, following the demanding shoot. Certainly the intensity of the process and attention to gorgeous detail has been captured in the final cut.

Day-Lewis plays a controlling fashion designer for the cream of London society in the 1950s, living and working from the opulent townhouse in Fitzroy Square. The square features from the first scene in the trailer, take a look here.

Local residents and businesses made the shoot welcome, despite the difficulties and the production very kindly made generous donations to local charities.

According to The Knowledge, director Paul Thomas Anderson wanted to pursue the intimacy of working in fashion houses of the era, but the plan proved enormously challenging.

“It was awful,” said Day-Lewis of the filming experience. “We had hoped to find that way of working again where we would be self-contained, beholden to no-one, and uninterrupted. We built a world we could create and just stay in and no one could get into it. But in this townhouse, which was very beautiful, it was a nightmare.

“We were living on top of each other. It was an enormous unit. There was no space. The way it works if it’s helpful is that these rooms belong to you.

“But of course these rooms for us become storage spaces. You work in a room, then you have to move all that shit into another room, and that space becomes a storage space. That entire house was like a termite nest.”

Roberto Kouyoumdjian dealt with the production on behalf of local residents and businesses, to make the filming in Fitzroy Square possible. He has worked in the square for 12 years.