INTERVIEW: KEIRA KNIGHTLEY ON “KING ARTHUR”
by Ethan Aames
Every once in a while I really wish I could throttle this nation by its collective throat. “White Chicks” almost beat out “Fahrenheit 9/11″ last weekend for box office supremacy. What? I mean, really America: Your taste in art and utter disdain for anything meaningful makes me ashamed. But then you go and do something like embrace Keira Knightley and completely and totally redeem yourselves.
Look, I know you all dig her because she’s mind blowingly attractive. Fine. I can live with that. Little do you know, America, that she just so happens to be talented, charming, witty, intelligent, and surprisingly disarming as well. I, for one, hope she’s around for a long, long time.
Keira recently sat down with Cinema Confidential in Los Angeles to discuss her work on the upcoming Jerry Bruckheimer produced “King Arthur,” in which she plays a new version of an old legend.
Q: You don’t look blonde at all.
KEIRA: Or blue.
Q: Did you do a lot of research for this film by going back to the legend of Arthur?
KEIRA: No. Being British, we know it so well. I think that she’s a character that everyone knows, they all know this kind of romantic fantasy.
Q: That’s different than what’s in the movie though –
KEIRA: That’s what excited me. I think that there’s been so many movies about Camelot, and that famous love triangle. We all know them and they’re great. And you can go and see that if you want and you’ll get a completely different Guinevere. What excited me was playing it in a completely new way. I could definitely say, “All right, I’m definitely not copying anyone else.” To take this character who’s so infamous and completely change her is one of the reasons that you do this job, to keep on changing and surprising people.
Q: [Director] Antoine [Fuqua] says that you helped define Guinevere. Can you talk about what you brought to your character?
KEIRA: I just kind of thought, “All right, we’re trying to find a reality behind all of the myths and legends.” That goes for all of the characters as well. So as far as King Arthur goes you’re saying he’s a Roman General and therefore within his character is that entire roman culture.
So, Guinevere, she was a Pict, but they were a matriarchal society. So that automatically makes Guinevere a very strong person in her own right. I mean, certainly she would’ve fought on equal standing with men and definitely, me and Antoine kind of decided that she was probably one of the leaders or probably someone very high up within the society. So therefore, it was interesting. We got to discuss what certainly a guerilla leader is like – which essentially is what she would’ve been. We thought she was pretty calculating and manipulative as she would have to be.
So, alright, you take that and you kind of say that she suddenly finds herself in the middle of a group of people who she’s been fighting since she heard the word go. They’ve absolutely been the enemies. So for me, it was like she was trying to decide what the best course of action would be. Whether it’s to annihilate them from the inside or whether it’s to use some of them to her own advantage. So she makes a beeline for Arthur because he’s obviously the strongest and the one who’s going to help her on her way the most.
I think that there’s definitely a kind of sexual attraction between her and Lancelot, straightaway. But there is no way that this woman would allow herself to fall in love with someone who wasn’t going to be beneficial to her cause. I think that with Lancelot, it’s almost hostility. I mean, famously its’ the love triangle with Guinevere in the middle and the two boys on the outside. Almost for me it was like Arthur was in the middle and it was Guinevere and Lancelot trying to pull him in two different directions. I think that the characteristics of both Guinevere and Lancelot are actually very similar. They’re very head strong and almost need to reigned in by Arthur. So, there are still moments in the film where this that attraction between them.
Q: So, I take it then that Lancelot was jealous?
KEIRA: No. I think that he just wants him to do something else. He wants him to go back to [his homeland]. He wants Arthur to leave the Britains. And she wants him to stay.
Q: People are going to talk about your bare midriff, running around killing people -
KEIRA: It was very fun.
Q: It’s kind of like Raquel Welch or something in a fur bikini -
Oh, come on. I wasn’t in a fur bikini. I had trousers on. Well, historically, Picts and Celts would’ve been naked, and just painted blue. There was no way that I was going to do that. So we had to find something.
Q: You don’t do nudity?
KEIRA: I’ve done nudity for the right director. It’s not that. I just think that on a battlefield, you don’t want to see her tits bumping up and down. It would be rather distracting. For self-preservation as well, I thought that a little coverage would be helpful.
What we had to find was a costume that looked rustic and like it’d been handmade and all the rest of it. We did actually initially have me in full armor. But it didn’t work. You just think, “Well, where did she suddenly get that from?” So I had to go along the lines of all the others and what they were in and the guys, most of them were topless. So I actually had much more covering me than was covering them. The actual garment in question was in fact one solid top. It just looked like it was in two halves.
Q: How do you feel about this whole movie being possibly aimed at women, using the Guinevere story?
KEIRA: Yeah. I mean I think that what’s exciting about this film, and I hope that it does appeal to women as well as men, is that what you’ve got is a really strong female character. Someone who absolutely does stand up there with the guys and is in the middle of the battlefield. There is no question about it, and if you look, there are other girls there as well. I think that as a movie-goer, I want to see more strong women. That’s what I want to see. I’ve had enough of seeing girls who are very much just the girl in the film or who aren’t proactive. At the moment, we’re seeing more and more women who are really taking their life into their own hands and are going for it within the movies. I think that’s a really positive image. So hopefully women will appreciate that.
Q: Can you talk about your training for this film?
KEIRA: Well, right at the start when they offered me the role, they said, “Okay. We’re going to need you to bulk up.” And I thought that was absolutely right because there was no way that someone of my size now or the way that I was before I did it would be able to fight on equal standing with a man and come out of it all right. So I did that. They got me a personal trainer straight away and I did mostly weight lifting and boxing for about three hours a day. No, about two hours a day about four times a week which is pretty full on. It was great. On top of that, I did archery and sword fighting and knife fighting and a lot of horse riding as well, but I never got to ride a horse as well [in the movie]. I actually got quite good at it, and so I was really annoyed about that.
So yeah, I mean I did do a lot of training. I think that just before the film, we were doing pretty much about seven hours a day just going through the fights and all of that. Then while we were filming, there was a personal trainer on set, and a gym. So we were all kind of whisked into the gym when we weren’t filming and doing that. So it was great.
Q: Were there different personal trainers or one that stayed with you from the beginning?
KEIRA: I had a fantastic ex-paratrooper in London called Mark Jarvis. He was fantastic. Then, on set I had a guy called Ed Chow who I think did Angelina Jolie for “Tomb Raider,” but he was there for everyone, for all of the guys. Then we had the stunt guys who were teaching us to fight. I had a fantastic stunt girl called Kelly Dent who was meant to be my double, but it just so happened that I did always want to do as much of my fighting as possible. But it happened that I had three weeks off before the main sort of fight scene was filmed. So she said, “Why don’t you stick around and we’ll go through the fight step by step and at the end of it, we’ll just see how much you can do.” And I did it all, which was great. It was so much fun, so much fun.
Q: Did you shoot your own flaming arrows?
KEIRA: It’s difficult when the arrow is flaming. I got a bit singed. Yeah. No. I’d done it before. I’d done it at summer camps and stuff like that. So it was all right. I was much better than the boys.
Q: What about going back to “Pirates of the Caribbean,” Jerry Bruckheimer said you were starting in the winter?
KEIRA: Oh, really? There you go.
Q: Will that be your next movie then?
KEIRA: Actually, I’m going back to start “Pride and Prejudice” which will take me up to October, and then I don’t know. I mean, we all had a fantastic time doing the first one, a really fantastic time. I think that all of us want to do another one, definitely.
Q: So I guess that they must have a script, right?
KEIRA: They must…I look forward to reading it.
Q: How do you pick your roles?
KEIRA: The thing about it is that you can never second guess anything. You really can’t. You can only read the script. It’s a very personal choice. This is something that you have to live with for sometimes three months, sometimes for six months, sometimes for nine months. So I think that it is only a choice that the individual can make. As far as trying to choose something that’s going to make a big box office, you can never tell. So all you can go on is, “Do I like the script? Am I interested? Do I like people? Do I like their previous work?” I think that on this, the thing that was most exciting was the opportunity to work with Antoine. I mean, definitely, for me, I’ve worked with Jerry Bruckheimer and I really think that he’s amazing, amazing. So the opportunity to work with him again was one that I couldn’t turn down. But Antoine, as a talent, and the idea of him directing this film was just extraordinary.
Q: Now, you’re nineteen?
KEIRA: I am.
Q: What has been the biggest surprise of becoming a movie star?
KEIRA: I think that thing about the success is that it’s fabulous. It is.
Q: Do you have complaints?
KEIRA: Certainly not. But it is something that can be blown up and blown down in a second. That is its nature. It is a puff of smoke. That’s fine. And, personally, that’s what I find beautiful about it, but it isn’t something that’s going to last a long time. Therefore, all you can do is say, “Hey, this is cool. This is an interesting bit and that’s it.”