Nothing is real but the girl

Keira Knightley interview- Lula Magazine

Charlotte: Hello Keira, how are you?

Keira: Very well thank you.

I gather at the shoot yesterday, as well as a long conversation about fish, you were talking about music?
Well, I don’t really know that much about music, but I do love it. Like this guy called Josh Ritter. For my 21st birthday party my parents and my agent arranged for him to play as a complete surprise. My jaw was literally on the floor! And I got so embarrassed I couldn’t speak to him at all.

Do you have songs or albums you particularly love too?
I normally listen to the same albums over and over again, so, Nirvana Unplugged. And I’ve got a Julie London album, she’s completely fabulous, and Billy Eccleston, all that kind of 40s, early 50s lounge music that I love. And I love folk music. I love the words. If I can hear the words, and if it’s as simple as possible, you know, just a man and a guitar. I like that, it’s like they are telling a story.

So, if you like words are you a poetry person, or a novel person too?
There are a couple of Pablo Neruda poems that are so romantic. Some Dylan Thomas I love, but I’m not someone who can pick a book of poetry up and get lost in it. I’m a biography person. I love them. Though I’m not very good at finishing books.

How about when you were little?
I really loved P G Wodehouse’s Blandings series. I love them. I couldn’t read very much though, so I had them all on audiotapes. Completely brilliant. Another one that’s good for curling up with, have you read any Georgette Heyer?

Oh, yes! All the time when I was small.
My mum and I love them, and my agent adores them too. They’ve just re-released them, and I keep on going to look at them in the shop, but you just can’t sit on the train reading a Georgette Heyer, too embarrassing. I nearly bought a cover so that I could carry them around, reading them!

Reading them is like eating candyfloss?
Yes, but they’re so witty! I went to the exhibition about female writers recently, and there was a picture of her.

What did she look like?!
Quite unexpected. The quote was amazing though. I can’t remember exactly what it was, but it was something like: ‘I should be shot for what I write, it’s such drivel.’ Complete genius. I love the fact that she knows what it is, and she doesn’t try to pretend that it’s anything other than candyfloss. My mum always says to me: ‘I think you’re a writer.’ Which is bollocks, it’s just because she’s my mum. But writing was the reason she had me. She only started writing when she was 33, and the first script that she sold was the one that meant she had enough money to have another baby, and I was that baby. I was paid for by a script.

Your fate was sealed.
Yes. But I think it give you great hope that at every stage of life, things change, you change…

And new opportunities arise. At the moment in our culture, we seem to only celebrate what very young people do, and everything else is ignored.
I think it puts a terrible pressure on people that shouldn’t be there. If you look at films, Jesus, I started when I was 16 but it gives people and unrealistic idea about things. I think it’s such a shame there aren’t grown-ups in the industry. I don’t see enough women in their forties who I can aspire to. I’d quite like something or someone to aspire to! I mean, I’m 22, but there are so many young girls always appearing in the industry.

And you have people always trying to look young, having plastic surgery at 30.
I’m sorry: they’re having it at 20! I like expression. I like wrinkles.

Have you seen Away From Her, directed by Sarah Polley with Julie Christie? It’s great and focused on an older woman.
No, but I’m longing to because I’m such a fan of Sarah Polley. Have you ever seen a film, I think it’s called My Life Without You? About a woman who is dying, who has young children? She’s so good and understated in it. And I love her teeth. She doesn’t have perfect teeth and I always find that really comforting. Because people shouldn’t be perfect! Particularly not on film. Never, but especially not on film. I think it’s the imperfections that make a face interesting, and beautiful.

The same with many celebrity magazines. They’re so bland.
It’s weird; you think they might as well just paint the faces. But then, saying that, I don’t say, don’t take my spots away, when I have my photo taken!

I don’t think that there’s anything wrong with the fantasy, and with the idea of creating beautiful images.
No, but I think that’s where we’ve gone wrong, because they are meant to be a fantasy, but where the line has blurred is that we all go, no, but that should be reality. But that’s not the point of it. Beautiful pictures are wonderful, like a glass of champagne.

There’s not very much room for difference in the way people are presented now.
I make my mum come with me every time I go to LA, because otherwise I can’t handle it, and she’s got very long grey hair, the most phenomenal hair you’re ever seen, beautiful. And of course, she’s got lines, and whenever she goes to LA, she gets people stopping her in the street going: Oh my god! You’re so brave. Literally, women stop her in the street.

How do you find LA?
I’ve got friends who go there and love it for what it is, and don’t take it very seriously, I can’t quite do that. I need to learn to laugh at it. It’s very different. To sound incredibly poncy, it doesn’t come from smoking roll-up cigarettes with liquorice papers and a glass of red wine and talking the night away until you have interesting ideas. It comes from a very manufactured place. It’s so strange, all those women standing there, all looking identical, all immaculate with the same clothes.I think going out there as a young woman can make you feel weird. It’s like being at school and being the odd girl out, you just want to fit in. I feel very self-conscious when I am over there about the way that I dress, or the way I am. I can’t drive yet either, so I can’t get about anywhere, you can’t walk anywhere.

Freaky, it’s like you’re not allowed that independence.
It is freaky. I go and get my nails done something I would never do in London, just so that I can sit and be with and watch people.

So no plans to move out there then? Is home definitely in Britain? Could you ever live anywhere else? New York?
Home is Britain. I think I could live in New York. It’s the sort of place where you can walk down the street in a ball gown, and no one would think twice.

And every girl needs that option. How about Paris?
The great thing about Paris is you’ve got the tourists, but it’s still very much the Parisian’s city. I like places with their own identity. And I love the cafés in Paris – they have tables designed for just one person. My mother borrowed a friend’s flat and finished writing a script there. She had the cafés where she wrote in the morning, and others in the afternoon, it’s great that there are cities out there where you feel that you can and should do just that. There is a history of it.

When you look back at them, how do you feel about the films that you’ve made?
As soon as I’m in a film, I can’t watch it and go: Isn’t it great?

Do watch them at all?
Well, I haven’t watched all of them, let’s say. It’s strange watching yourself. It’s true of that particular moment, but you would always – even the day afterwards – you would do something different. So watching yourself a year or so after filming, you go: Why on earth did I do it like that?!

I suppose you’re always going to be moving as a person.
Hopefully. I think the moment that you are actually happy with a performance, that’s probably the time to stop. You should never feel comfortable.

Isn’t that exhausting?
Yes. The last film I did, I filmed for two months, not long, but it was really intense, and we were doing eight scenes a day. It was amazing, but I got to the end of it and got really depressed. You are totally immersed in it for that time, and then when it goes, it goes suddenly. It’s not a profession for a sane person. I don’t think it goes hand in hand.

It must be endless highs and lows…
That’s exactly what it is, huge highs and lows. I think it’s only really designed for people who are slightly unstable, who emotionally run the gauntlet. You meet any actress, they’re all neurotic, it is the only way that it works!

I’m amazed that people can do it.
Yes. I mean they’re mad! It’s the only plausible explanation! God knows what they’re doing to themselves. Watching writers as well, especially novelists or playwrights, watching them go into their world. My mum has always been in two places at one. Ever since I was little there was the real world, and there was the story world, and she’d be talking in real world, but you’d know that she was actually in story world. You know, the film we’ve just finishes, she wrote the screenplay, and she lived with these characters, and I felt really sad when we actually started making the film because all of a sudden we took her characters. We’re incredibly close, and I would see in a funny way it was devastating.

Did she come to the set?
She came for about a week, and then it was too much. But suddenly she’s out of that world, and has to try and find another one to live in. it was terrifying thinking what Ian McEwan would make of the film Atonement – it must be strange because it’s not his anymore, it’s the directors. He created Cecilia, and I think describes her as a blonde, blue-eyed and slightly horsy, he’s through about this person so much. Then I come along, and I’m not that person at all. I’d be so sad one person had been killed off by another version of them.

Do you still get a kick out of the highs and lows of filming?
Yes, at the moment I do. But I don’t know. It used to be all I ever wanted, even when I was tiny. That world. It’s such an incredible world, for a small person to peek into, it’s magic. Even though you are seeing behind the magic of films and theatre, it’s still magic. And I think if you lose that, you shouldn’t be in it. And I think that women in particular lose it much more quickly than men do. I think women get incredibly self-conscious. And much as I can sit here at 22 and say: Isn’t it great to have lines, I think when you get older you realise how close the camera is, I think you become aware of yourself and I don’;t think that’s very nice, and I think the magic goes.

What were you like when you were little? From what you’ve said you sound quite precocious.
Yes. Pretty much! My mum always used to say I was born aged 45 and I’d meet myself at 22 and a half. Which is in September so I’m looking forward to being able to regress. I never liked the idea of being young. Weird. Teenager-dom wasn’t very comfortable. My twenties are good.
When you think about growing up, would you move somewhere green, to the countryside?
I don’t know. I’ve been sort of flirting with the idea, I don’t really go out that much in London, I mean I like it, but I don’t really use the clubs or anything like that. And I do love it that my boyfriend’s mum has this incredible garden where she grows all her own vegetables, and I love going there. What I can’t figure out is if I’d love it everyday.

It would be wonderful, but you have to be brave to do it.
I do think you need to have incredible internal resources.

And not really, really want that dress you saw in Vogue!
Yes. Yes, and I’m not quite there yet! For all that I love fresh peas and home grown vegetables, I hate to say it but I have completely bought into consumer culture and I do go oooh over clothes! I have this terrible thing when I’m shopping of buying clothes for someone else. You know, if I were this person, I would wear these all the time! Then you get it home and go: I’m not that person, I never will be. I’d love to be one of those women who wear high heels all the time.

As if they were slippers?
Exactly! I did a shoot the other day and they gave me a pair of the shoes I was wearing, these amazing Chanel platforms. I was like: Right, fuck it; they’re never coming off. I wore them to the shops on Edgware Road and stacked it. Fell over in the middle of Edgware Road, had to walk home barefoot.

Ok, final question, what’s your favourite Kirsten Dunst film?
That’s so hard. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. I love the bit where she’s dancing on the bed in her knickers.