Keira Knightley's Love Story

In Atonement, a sweeping story of wartime love and loss based upon a popular novel, gorgeous and talented Keira Knightley plays Cecelia Tallis, a very upper crusty Brit heiress whose jealous little sister sabotages her steamy romance with lower class hottie Robbie (James McAvoy), the educated son of the estate's housekeeper.

When we sat down in Beverly Hills with Keira, we wanted to know about the 22-year-old's life after "Pirates", her research for the World War II era role in Atonement, the long rehearsal process before making the movie, her great wardrobe [or lack of it] in the film. [She jumps into a fountain in her underwear] and what it's like acting in a future movie (The Edge of Love) that her playwright mom Sharman wrote.

For our interview, Keira wore a black sweater over a cute black Topshop dress dotted, like the night sky, with big silver stars and she teetered on very high black heels. Her long hair is now back to her natural brown with a bit of gold at the ends. The very animated actress loves to gesture with her hands as she talks.

TeenHollywood: Love that cute dress you have on but that long green sheer formal gown you wear in the film is to die for.

Keira:[big smile] It was a great dress. It's actually very fragile though, so every single one of them broke. It was like tissue paper. The [burn-out] pattern in the front of it was done by lasers, so it was holes in the fabric. But it meant that there was such a tiny amount of fabric between the holes that literally you'd do that [quickly moves her arm] and it would just rip all along it. So obviously a certain scene in the library took its toll on the dress.

TeenHollywood: Ah, the hot love scene. The bookcase didn't look too comfortable to lean against.

Keira: I don't remember that it was particularly comfortable. I was hoisted up. They made the bookshelves for it, so they were specially made [padded] bookshelves to make it easier, but it was quite athletic.

TeenHollywood: There is a big shocker in the film because of a racy love letter. Do you have experience receiving love letters?

Keira: [laughs, impish grin] Not that I'm going to tell you about! I'll keep that to myself, thank you very much! [laughs].

TeenHollywood: "Atonement" was a very popular novel. Did you know the book?

Keira: I knew of it and I think it was lying around in my house and I never got around to reading it, but a lot of my friends had read it and absolutely loved it, they were quite obsessed with it, but they said 'you can't make that into a film'. So when they sent me the script I was intrigued because I had heard that it was the un-filmable novel. The script just made me sob and I thought it was just so tragic and terrifying. I thought it was very powerful.

TeenHollywood: After reading the screenplay, did you go to the book to maybe fill in what Cecelia was thinking?

Keira: It was really interesting to read the script and then go to the book. I read it before we started, and understand, actually, why people always said it was un-filmable. I think it's got a lot to do with the fact that it's these internal monologues. It's all about what they are thinking, which from an actor's point of view, is so helpful because it was like having a blueprint, particularly for Cecelia because I think she's a very difficult woman and not particularly nice at the beginning. Yet you go to the book and you completely understand why she's misbehaving; why she's being bratish, why she's on edge. Her thought process is all there, so that made it very easy and interesting to play.

TeenHollywood: We hear that you had a long and intensive rehearsal process before shooting the movie.

Keira: It was interesting because we actually HAD rehearsal for this film. We never do normally. It was a lot of the sort of stuff you do if you were doing theater. Normally you get maybe an afternoon with a director where you talk through it. You certainly don't read through it. And I think a lot of film actors and film directors feel quite embarrassed and uncomfortable about rehearsal. I don't know why. I certainly never give the performance I'm going to give in rehearsal that I do on film. But what was brilliant about it is it was a time that we could really work the dialogue and really see what was right and what was working and what wasn't.

TeenHollywood: And, most movies, you don't get to do that?

Keira: No, normally you come onto set and you've got about 10 minutes to figure out a) that there is a problem, and b) how to sort it out. Sometimes that actually works really well and sometimes it doesn't. But it was really nice on this because it was, as far as projects go, it was quite a risky project.

TeenHollywood: This movie seems like one of those classic 1940's war romances to me.

Keira: Yes. Joe [Wright, her director] was doing it in that '40s accent, a really fast, very clipped British accent. It doesn't exist anymore and a lot of people have shied away from it in the past because it's seen as being incredibly theatrical and very stylized and stilted. So it was really great to have like three weeks where we all worked on the accent together because we decided right from the top if we didn't really go for it that it just wasn't going to work, so everybody had to be on the same page. Also it's a story that isn't about what is said, it's about what isn't said. We watched a lot of films as well from that period, which was really helpful. It was Brief Encounter, In Which We Serve and then various news clippings from that time as well. It's that peak of the stiff upper lip and 'well, just get on with it. You soldier on!'

TeenHollywood: Everyone was smoking up a storm too.

Keira: What we were trying to do is really go back to that 1940s style of filmmaking as well, and you watch any of those films and it's a cigarette on the go the whole time. So I watched a lot of Greta Garbo for her cigarette action. It was a really interesting way of holding it [she demonstrates]. And then there was some fantastic Bette Davis cigarette action as well. I think I stole both.

TeenHollywood: The wonderful young actress Saoirse (pronounced Sheer-Sha) Ronan, plays your little sister. She's pretty extraordinary.

Keira: She was 12 when she played Briony and it's an extraordinary thing to watch when a 12-year-old gives that performance because that's when you realize this is not taught. So where does that kind of talent come from? She has this broad Irish accent and there she is [in the film] giving this pitch perfect 1940s English accent. I can't imagine any other person of her age being able to play that role with the complexity that she managed. I'm sure she'll be wonderful in The Lovely Bones as well.

TeenHollywood: What was your favorite scene in this film?

Keira: I think as far as sort of my favorite scene when I read it and when I was playing it, was the one in the tea shop when they see each other for the first time after five years. I suppose that was the most challenging and rewarding it was realizing what these two people wanted to do and wanted to say, and these melodramatic feelings that would have been exploding inside of them, and yet keeping a lid on it. So it was, I suppose, challenging just keeping that balance between keeping that emotion there and keeping that intensity there, but actually also trying to rein in; just getting that balance right.

TeenHollywood: So, your favorite scene wasn't jumping into a fountain in your skivvies and getting soaking wet?

Keira: [laughs] Oh, that was just cold. We shot that over two days and on the first day they heated the water, so it was absolutely fine. And on the second day they didn't so it was freezing! I think they just couldn't be bothered. Actually I got rather ratty. I don't think I behaved particularly well. I was pissed off! It was absolutely freezing cold, but it looks good so that's the main thing. Everybody keeps saying it was really warm. Well, I remember a couple of days of it being warm, but on the whole I don't remember it being warm. But maybe it was because I was [almost] naked jumping into a fountain!

TeenHollywood: So, you don't have any special resistance to water after "Pirates"?

Keira: I should do, but no. In the "Pirates" films we had such huge costumes on over the top that we were actually wearing wetsuits underneath, but here there was no room for a wetsuit in that fountain.

TeenHollywood: I got to take swordsmanship lessons from your stunt woman on "Pirates" Lisa Hoyle and she said that you picked up the stunt choreography faster than anyone else in the film. Are you that quick a study? How do you learn so quickly?

Keira: I think it was a lot to do with Lisa on the stunts. She is completely fantastic. If you've got a good teacher then you can learn and you want to learn. I find I really enjoy it. Anything that I really like, I like getting stuck in it.

TeenHollywood: Are you done with the "Pirate" films?

Keira: I don't know. It was an extraordinary experience, it really was, and the success of those films has been just amazing, but I think, for me, I've always liked three as a number. That's quite good.

TeenHollywood: Was there a movie you saw growing up that changed your life?

Keira: It would probably be something really obvious. It would either be Little Women with Katherine Hepburn, or it would be Gone with the Wind. I wanted to be them. I still do watch Gone with the Wind [like it was] on a loop. But Little Women I watched until the video broke completely, and I think I've gone through about three videos of it. My mother would just have to keep buying it for me because I couldn't stop, just around and around and around.

TeenHollywood: How much research on the WW II time period etc. did you do for Atonement?

Keira: I think my grandparents actually lived in Balham, where Cecilia was meant to live during the war. They are not alive anymore, but I'd heard lots of stories from grandparents. I've always been interested in that period anyway. When I went to college it was what I was studying. I dropped out, but it was what I started to study. And I did read a lot around that period, some really great books. I think there is such a discrepancy in how people actually were, and the films of that time because of there's no sex, no violence. I think people today have a very perceived notion of how people behaved then. When you read books about the time you see that it's, of course, very, very different.

TeenHollywood: You look great in period costumes but are you looking forward to going very modern in a film?

Keira: I have very much been in period pieces. Two films I've got coming out next year are both period as well, and partly because I wanted to work in Britain. I had been away for such a long time If you look at what's exported, film-wise, from Britain, it is the period pieces. I know Britain absolutely has a vibrant and modern culture, but that's not what sells overseas, which is fair enough. For me, it's more been about the characters, about the stories. You have to go with the script that speaks to you. So yes, I'd love to do a contemporary piece. I just haven't found one that's done it for me yet.

TeenHollywood: What is next for you then?

Keira: I've got these two films; The Duchess, which is with Ralph Fiennes and Charlotte Rampling, which I finished last week. And then the The Edge of Love, which is with Sienna Miller, and my mom wrote it. So they are both coming out next year.

TeenHollywood: Was that your first time playing in a "mom" project?

Keira: Professionally, yeah. It is. It was really exciting. Predominately she is a playwright and this is the third film that she's got made. So it was really exciting to work on it.

TeenHollywood: Was she around on set?

Keira: I think she only came about twice, which is weird because she loves hanging around on my sets, but I think, for a writer, your work is done once you start filming. And this certainly was. The script was locked. So she didn't really hang about.

TeenHollywood: Did she write the part with you in mind?

Keira: No. She said, 'I think I'm having a problem with this draft, can you give me notes?', which she'd never actually done before, so I read it, and gave her some notes. But I said, 'if you get this up and running I'm going to play that part!' And she went, oh yeah, f off. And it happened!

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Lynn Barker is a Hollywood-based entertainment journalist and produced screenwriter.