Keira Knightly is in snowy New York, with her boyfriend, Rupert Friend, to promote her latest movie “Atonement.”
Keira (22), stars with James McAvoy in this ambitious film adaptation of Ian McEwan’s acclaimed 2001 novel, “Atonement.” Knightley plays Cecilia Tallis, an upper-class woman in pre-World War II England whose love for the son (McAvoy) of her family’s housekeeper is sorely and cruelly tested.
“Atonement” previewed back in September, at the Toronto International Film Festival, and reunites Knightley with “Pride & Prejudice” director Joe Wright. It was then that Knightly spoke to the Boston Globe about the role that is already getting her Oscar buzz.
Keira in the part of Cecilia represents the sort of civilized suffering the Academy adores, but for Knightly the role is so much more, being her first mature part but a part that’s about maturing - about taking responsibility for one’s own choices and feelings.
ON PLAYING THE PART:
“I was looking for something more mature, and when I got the script,
she sort of ticked all the boxes. I wanted a woman who was dealing with
the problems of being a woman, not the problems of being a girl. I liked that she wasn’t particularly nice. I liked the fact that she wasn’t particularly good. And I loved that she was, in a funny way,
redeemed by her love and by her sacrifice. Well, what I loved about Cecilia is that she’s wearing a mask, all the time. I think most people are. What was interesting was looking at that mask and then looking at what was underneath. It’s the 1930s and ‘40s, which was the peak of the British stiff upper lip, the peak of that society’s emotional repression.
As far as the characterization goes, it hugely helped to watch a lot of ‘40s British movies: Celia Johnson [in “Brief Encounter”], and Deborah Kerr. It helps with that voice. There’s rigidness. The whole stiff-upper-lip thing is literally that. You see it a lot in older generations, people in their 80s in Britain, in the upper middle class and upper class - they’ve got this very held-together face, and that’s what we were trying to get. Once you imagine yourself in the period, actually, I found the characterization very easy. There didn’t seem to be another option about how to play her.”
ON WORKING WITH DIRECTOR JOE WRIGHT AGAIN:
It’s wonderful to watch. He’s creating a company. He’s now found Seamus McGarvey, who’s a fabulous director of photography, and the camera team feels like it’s cemented. And then Jacqueline Durran, who’s the costume designer, who did “Pride & Prejudice,” and Sarah Greenwood, who was the production designer, who also did “Pride & Prejudice.” Dario Marianelli - normally, no actress is ever going to know who the [expletive] the composer is . . .
ON HER NEXT PROJECT WITH MATTHEW RHYS:
“I’ve got a film I just finished that my Mum (playwright Sharman Macdonald) made about the circle of friends around Dylan Thomas. It’s called “The Edge of Love” at the moment I don’t think that title will stick. I play Vera Phillips who was his childhood sweetheart and who he and [Thomas’s wife] Caitlin meet with during the Second World War in Wales.”
“Atonement” opens in limited release on December 7, 2007