‘She’s an absolute powerhouse’: Paul Thomas Anderson ‘dying’ to work with Olivia Colman

Anderson’s latest film, Licorice Pizza, is released later this month

Paul Thomas Anderson has said he is “dying” to work with Oscar winner, Olivia Colman.

Anderson, the director of films such as Boogie Nights and Phantom Thread, was asked by Variety which actors he wanted to work with and he named The Crown star.

He told the publication: “Olivia Colman, she’s an absolute powerhouse.”

Anderson also expressed enthusiasm for collaborating with Denzel Washington: “Denzel. There’s a white whale right there. That power, the scale of his movie-star power and range, that’s very exciting to think about working with.”

The Oscar-nominated film director also said he was “anxious” to work with Joaquin Phoenix again after making The Master and Inherent Vice with the Joker actor.

Elsewhere in the interview, Anderson discussed casting the late actor Philip Seymour Hoffman’s son – Cooper – as the lead in his new film, Licorice Pizza: “Cooper had years and years and years of experience under his belt of making home movies with me and my family. Generally, they are action-oriented films where he’d get beaten up as the bad guy by my son who heroically throws him off a cliff or shoots him in the face. Besides that, he’d not acted in a professional way.”

(Getty Images for Palm Springs In)

He added: “I didn’t write it for him. I wrote it for a blurry 15- or 16-year-old boy. I never imagined when I was writing it that it would be Cooper. I thought that I would take the more traditional route and pursue a young actor. There were a few I met that were talented, but most of them already seemed at a young age to be overly trained, overly mannered and overly ambitious, which was not interesting to me.”

Licorice Pizza is Anderson’s first film since 2017’s Phantom Thread, which was also the last film starring Daniel Day-Lewis.

Licorice Pizza also stars musician Alana Haim, Sean Penn, Bradley Cooper and Tom Waits.