'What I've learned from the real legends'

Keira Knightley talks to Robert Hayes about her latest role, winning awards and working with Depp, Dench and Donald

By Robert Hayes
Thursday November 22 2007

She was nominated for an Academy Award for her role as Elizabeth Bennet in Pride & Prejudice, acted opposite Orlando Bloom and Keith Richards in the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy, and this week Atonement star Keira Knightley was crowned film actress of the year at the Variety Club Showbiz Awards in London.

The Oscar buzz is intensifying around 22-year-old Keira, who is currently filming Tony Scott's period drama The Duchess, but has taken some time out to answer our questions about life as a child actress, body fascism and working with Johnny Depp.

NATALIE PORTMAN SAID ALL THE YOUNG ACTORS WHO ARE GETTING ROLES BEGAN WORKING AS CHILDREN. IT SEEMS TO BE SUCH A HARD BUSINESS. ARE YOU SURPRISED AT HOW EASY IT HAS BEEN OR HAS IT BEEN A TOUGH ROAD?

No, not particularly. I'd love to say it was that dramatic. I think that this is an industry of smoke and mirrors. I think everybody thinks they know what the entertainment industry is and very few people actually do.

I think the wonderful thing about having been a child actor is that I've seen the truth of it from a very, very early age. I've never come into it with this idea of what it was going to be.

I always saw a kind of reality and I think that's very helpful. It is hard. If you don't have the support there, it's very easy to crumble under the strain of that.

YOU'RE CURRENTLY SHOOTING 'THE DUCHESS'. WHAT ROLE DO YOU PLAY?

I'm the Duchess, and it's set in the 1780s. It's about Georgiana, the Duchess of Devonshire, who was a political hostess for the weaker party in the 1780s. It's about her marriage and various relationships along the way.

I've done a lot of modern-day pieces though such as Bend It Like Beckman, Love Actually and The Jacket. But I do like period films. I think if you're working in England, then more often than not, you're going to be working in period pieces because I think that's what sells abroad the most. I've always loved them from a very early age.

For me, film is about escapism. What excites me about my job is trying to find realities that are impossible to find today, so therefore going back in time is definitely one of them. I love trying to find the way these people thought in such different societies.

In a funny way, I find it more liberating, because we don't actually know what it was like, so you can play around with it.

THERE'S DEFINITE OSCAR BUZZ AROUND 'ATONEMENT', AND YOU'VE EXPERIENCED THIS BEFORE WITH 'PRIDE & PREJUDICE' SO DO YOU LIKE THE 'BEST ACTRESS' RACE?

I don't make films in order to get awards. I obviously don't make films for an audience of one. You want as many people to see films as possible. You want them to enjoy or get moved by films that you're in. I think if it got nominations, if it got awards, then that would be the icing on the cake.

If it doesn't, that does not devalue the piece of the work. It must never turn into 'I'm doing this to get...' and so it doesn't. But, yes, how lovely that people are actually mentioning this film in the same sentence as the Oscars.

WHAT ARE SOME THINGS YOU'VE PICKED UP FROM THE GREAT GROUP OF ACTORS YOU'VE WORKED WITH?

I'd watch Johnny [Depp], I'd go right, you're a genius, you're a legend, I'm going to understand how that works, and I'm going to be better, and you watch it and you have no idea how that happens. I don't know what they're doing, I don't know where it comes from.

So I don't think you can actually pick up something or I haven't been able to steal anything. I think what I've learned -- actually from working with everyone -- but mostly from Donald Sutherland and Judi Dench. They're both living legends, and they were both really nervous when we started [filming Pride & Prejudice], and both so excited by it.

They were watching Carey Mulligan and Talulah Riley, who were playing two of my sisters, and they were so excited about how good they were.

For people who've made hundreds of films, to still be that excited, and still be that nervous, and you're kind of [amazed]. As a 20-year-old actress, you go yeah, they're sitting there, they're still learning, nothing's ever good enough, they're still hungry for it, and you think that's brilliant.

And it's the same with Johnny Depp, you watch him playing Jack Sparrow, and he's loving it, he's excited by it, and sometimes he goes 'oh, was that all right; was that okay?'

And you say, 'you're Johnny Depp, man! You know that's okay! You know that's okay!' But he doesn't. He's still going, 'Gore [Verbinski], help!' I mean, that's amazing, it's cool. It just is a privilege to see the human side of it, it's really exciting.

WHAT DO YOU DO WITH YOUR TIME OFF?

I really don't have any time off, but I've got a couple of weeks holidays over Christmas, I'm going to go home to London and sit in my flat and not move.

- Robert Hayes

http://www.independent.ie/entertainment/film-cinema/what-ive-learned-from-the-real-legends-1226428.html