Keira Knightley talks with Examiner.com about her role in "Anna Karenina," the elegant dresses and the beautiful jewelry and also concludes with her upcoming projects.
Keira Knightley recalls reading the novel when she was 19, and remained her favorite since then. As she spoke with Examiner.com, she added how different it is to read before shooting for the movie than what she read in her early age. It has given her completely a new perspective about the character of Anna. "'This is totally different than I remember it being.' And this is a much darker character than I remember, and suddenly the question of her function within the piece, you know, I think because it's called Anna Karenina, a lot of people go, 'We have to sympathize with her all the time,' "she said.
Knightgly says the costumes designed are "full of symbolism." She loves the designs by Jacqueline Durran, who also made her costumes in her previous movies with director Joe Wright, in Pride and Prejudice and Atonement. She said Durran worked on the costumes from base of the character keeping every little thing in mind to give it a unique touch.
"That's what I love about Jacqueline, like the dresses tell the story as much as everything else does, you know. And that goes for the actual set design as well," she said about Durran in the interview."There's symbolism everywhere within the movie if you want to look for it and find it. And I love that so you take something that is just a pretty dress, and then you turn it into something that is actually a massive part of the creation of the character."
When asked about the jewelry, Knightly stressed how important it was to have the right kind of jewelry, which is real diamonds, lent by Chanel. "Fortunately I have a relationship with Chanel and Joe has a relationship with Chanel and they very kindly lent us, unfortunately didn't give me, but lent us all of jewelry, which is great," Knightley said in the interview.
Knightley recalled reading so much about pride and self importance in the book, and jewelry would be the exact way to put it across. "Again, vanity is a massive part of Anna's character. I mean, if you go read the book he talked about it for pages and pages and pages...so I think we all felt like that was important," she added. "If you could get the real stuff then that would be great because it lights in a way that paste is never going to light."
Knightley has been busy with many projects in hand. She wants to try something different going forward in her movies as she thinks most of the movies she did lately are "dark," where she either dies or something terrible happens. "I'm not going to do anything dark this year," she said.
She couldn't stop talking about a film she shot with Mark Ruffalo and Catherine Keener, "Can A Song Save Your Life." She said this movie is about "friendship and making an album, which is very lovely. And then I'm doing a piece of absolute pure entertainment which is the Hollywood thriller called Jack Ryan. And so I don't die, which is great!"
