Tuesday Trivia: Too Pretty for Lizzie?

Keira Knightley is a beauty. There’s no question about that. When she was cast as Elizabeth Bennet in the 2005 adaptation of Pride & Prejudice, more than a few eyebrows were raised, for, though Austen provides little concrete description of her beloved heroine, she is not considered strikingly pretty—remember Mr. Darcy’s initial assessment? Interestingly, Joe Wright, the film’s director, had this in mind when brainstorming potential candidates for the large role, that of a literary icon with a worldwide female (and probably male) fanbase, and he wasn’t interested in Knightley, thinking her too beautiful for the part.

“I thought Lizzie should be slightly plainer, that Darcy is attracted to the liveliness of her mind and not her physical beauty,” explains the hip-looking thirtysomething director. “But when I went to Montreal to meet Keira the day after her nineteenth birthday, she bounded in and I suddenly I realized that she was a tomboy. It seemed that she’d always been put in these pretty dresses and told to look pretty and suddenly there was this quite angular, feisty girl who couldn’t shut up. She just talked and talked and talked and talked and talked and suddenly I realized this was the key to Lizzie, that this could work.”

Keira remembers being very anxious, knowing she was fighting an uphill battle—so imagine her excitement when she landed the major part in a story that had captivated her from the age of seven!

 

Source: Urban Cinefile

~ by Lady Ashley on June 30, 2009.