Yesterday’s Keira Knightley post was nice, wasn’t it? It’s good to remember every now and then that Keira Knightley really is an interesting young woman. She’s been mostly quiet the past few years, but with the international release of A Dangerous Method, Keira is doing more interviews and I’ve come to the realization that… Keira is fine. I was worried about her for no reason. She’s doing well.

Anyway, these are photos from the “gala premiere” of A Dangerous Method in London. I thought they had already done the premiere in the UK, but that was just for the London Film Festival. This is the real premiere, and Method is about to open in England. Keira wore this rich burgundy Burberry gown which…I kind of like. It’s somewhat plain, but it really works on a tall, slender beanpole like Keira. Plus, her hair and makeup are really good here too. It’s all working for me.

I’m going to put the Viggo Mortensen and Michael Fassbender photos in another post – but I’d just like to note again, Keira and Viggo Mortensen are very friendly and handsy with each other. That’s Viggo’s hand on her ass – NOT Fassy’s. Fassy got to spank her in the movie (and she hated it!!!!!!!) but in real life, Keira and Michael seem to not be that comfortable with each other. Personally, I kind of think Viggo might have tapped that. I’m just sayin’.

Photos courtesy of Fame/Flynet and WENN.

Keira Knightley kind of has the same problem as Michelle Williams – for the past few years, Keira has been selling a particular kind of image of herself (quiet, subdued, not sexy, not famewhore-y, “real actress”) and it’s startling to see her do a revealing photo shoot and interview. But unlike Michelle Williams, Keira has never tried to convince us that she’s oh-so-fragile. Keira has always put herself out there as competent, assured, self-contained, and never helpless. Which makes this “sexy” GQ UK photo shoot for the March issue NOT cringe-inducing. I actually think Keira pulls it off – she looks sexy and even dare I say… healthy. Like she’s back on solid food.

Keira is still promoting A Dangerous Method, which has just come out in the UK, I believe. In the interview, she talks about more about being spanked by Michael Fassbinder (this bitch!!!!) and about how American audiences are generally more supportive of her:

It is a dramatic departure from her usual image as the quintessential English rose.
Keira Knightley, more commonly seen in the bonnets and bustles of period dramas, poses provocatively in a series of outfits that leave little to the imagination.

The actress wears nothing more than a low-cut jumper, high heels and blood red lipstick in one shot, while in another, she shows off her long legs as she reclines on a chaise lounge in a 1950s-style swimming costume.

Another of the images, which will appear in the March issue of GQ magazine, shows the 26-year-old modelling a tasselled black jacket as she runs her fingers through her hair.
Perhaps Miss Knightley was getting into the spirit of her latest role in A Dangerous Method, which she almost turned down after telling director David Cronenberg that some scenes were too risque.

She told an interviewer: ‘I said, I love you, I love the script. But I don’t think it’s something I can do, so I might have to turn it down. Once he said he didn’t want it to be sexy or voyeuristic, and as soon as I got my head around the S&M mentality, I said, “Okay, let’s do it”.’

Miss Knightley also spoke about how different the perceptions are of her in both America and her home country.

She explained: ‘The Americans are generally a lot more supportive. They generally like the work a lot more than they do here. It is what it is, I suppose. It could just be that I’m not to a lot of people’s tastes. Which is fine. Well it’s not, obviously. You want to be to everyone’s taste… But, I think it’s better to do your own thing rather than try to please everyone and just be this mushy thing in the middle.. Sometimes it’s like water off a duck’s back, and sometimes it really hurts… and then you go away and cry for an hour or so, and then pick yourself up again…’

‘I’ve always tried to give everything 100 per cent…if you’re not working what are you? You’re lazy. You’re doing nothing and what the **** is that?’ she tells GQ.

The actress has been dating musician James Righton, 28, from the band Klaxons, for almost a year. Her last relationship with Pride & Prejudice co-star Rupert Friend ended in December 2010 after five years.

But she said she is happier than she has ever been with her life right now, adding: ‘I’m actually loving this bit right now – doing the work I’m doing, having the life I can have around it. Right now, it’s really good.’

Miss Knightley also revealed to GQ that she read the work of Jung and Sigmund Freud while researching her latest role.

She said: ‘I vaguely knew it was about sex and blaming your parents. Apart from that I had no idea. So I had to do quite a lot of research to understand what they were talking about and understand where [Sabina] was coming from and the nature of the illness that she had.’

The film, which has its UK premiere tonight, tells the story of a love affair between Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung and his beautiful patient Sabina Spielrein, played by Miss Knightley.

[From The Mail]

Keira also discusses her battle with dyslexia – you can read her comments here. I do think she sounds good – healthy, mentally, emotionally, and hopefully physically. I like that she spent a few years away, not doing many films and working on the stage. It was a smart career move. Too few actors actually go away and let people MISS them, you know? And Keira has been missed – as much as she’s criticized, she is one of the more talented young actresses out there.

Photos courtesy of GQ UK via The Mail.

At the National Board of Review Awards, lots of the ladies were in black. Obviously, they’re not going to pull out their show-stopping gowns for a critics’ awards show, but I do wish that some of the girls had tried a little bit harder. First up: Keira Knightley in Nina Ricci. Much like Duchess Kate, Keira has a lace problem. Keira loves lace, and her lace dresses often fall into the “doily” category for me. This dress is just… it’s too precious and not flattering enough for her. Meh. Also: what’s up with her face? Her eyes and mouth look super-weird to me.

Compare Keira to Rooney Mara in this Miu Miu dress. Rooney consistently chooses dresses that do very little for her slender, petite figure. It’s the weirdest thing. She basically has the same body as pre-pregnancy Natalie Portman – you’d think that Rooney could find some stuff that would really flatter her. I do like Rooney’s hair and makeup here, but only by comparison to how underdone and corpsey she looked throughout the promotion of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.

And here’s Helen Mirren, showing those little bitches how a real bitch should wear black. OWN IT, HELEN.

Photos courtesy of WENN.

I have my issues with Keira Knightley as a person, as a celebrity and as an actress, but for the most part, I do have a lot of positive feelings towards and about her. I think she’s a better actress than people give her credit for. I think she has one of the most interesting/enchanting/prettiest/oddest faces of all of the young Hollywood girls. And I think that Keira knows her own mind – she’s not the kind of girl where you can say, “Oh, she was led astray” or “someone talked her into that.” Keira knows what she wants. She’s not going to be talked into anything, and I admire that in a person.

I bring all of this up because I was looking at these new photos of Keira at the London Film Festival premiere of A Dangerous Method, and I happened upon this one:

WTF? Granted, it’s just a bad photo and the camera is much, much too close. But all of a sudden, she looks like a villainess in a World War II film. Like, she should be threatening Indiana Jones with her pet snake, who she has named Harriet Goebbels. I think it’s the hair, right?

As for Keira’s red carpet look, the dress is Roksanda Ilincic Resort 2012. The front half of the skirt is cream, the back half is black. That part of the dress I could have handled, but I have issues with criss-cross bodice. It looks really strange on Keira’s body – it makes her waist look thick, and her real waist is not thick in the least. Plus, I don’t like the length of the skirt at all. You could chop off three inches and the dress would be so much better.

I should note something, just because I’ve been paying WAY too much attention to the publicity tour for A Dangerous Method. When the cast began doing the film festivals, Keira looked really tight with Viggo Mortensen, even holding hands with him on several red carpets. On the other hand, she and Michael Fassbender seemed to have more of “sister annoyed by crazy brother” relationship – she didn’t even enjoy a good Fassie spanking! Anyway, here’s what I noticed: Keira didn’t pose with either men on the red carpet last night, and when the three of them posed inside the theater, Keira seemed to be pulling away from both. Hmm….

Photos courtesy of WENN.

Maybe I should be grateful that Keira Knightley wasn’t all up on Michael Fassbender’s jock when they filmed their erotic spanking scenes in A Dangerous Method. Obviously, The Fassdong is a powerful thing, but Keira managed to walk away un-Fass’d. I wonder how she does it? Because after I see one of his films, I’m covered in total and utter Fass-lust for DAYS. I can’t even imagine what it would be like to be in the same room with him. Or God forbid, by put in a position where I was tied to a bed and he had to spank me. Oh, there it is. My new happy place.

Keira discussed A Dangerous Method, and her scenes with Fassbender in a new interview with The Hollywood Reporter. It’s a really in depth piece – you can read the full thing here – so I’ll include some of her comments on her career and some of older films.

On her early years as an actress: “It was always, sort of, my escape — and, sort of, a secret, because I wasn’t allowed to talk about it at school… 18, 19, 20, 21 is quite a tricky time, I think, in anybody’s life, whether you’re in the public eye or not, so the added thing of being followed around by groups of paparazzi, and being written about, and everything was very strange, particularly when you’re, kind of, going, ‘I don’t know who I am or what I want’.”

The Oscar nominations for Pride & Prejudice and Atonement: “It didn’t make me feel validated at all… I had very low self-confidence… I always believed the negative stuff and I never believed the positive stuff.”

Her next role: It was announced this week that her next project will reunite her with Joe Wright, her director on Pride & Prejudice and Atonement, for another ambitious literary adaptation: Anna Karenina, who has previously been played on the big screen by the likes of Greta Garbo (1935) and Vivien Leigh (1948). Knightley told me, “I mean, it’s a monumental book, and it’s a very hard task. So it’s gonna be great.”

On preparing for A Dangerous Method: “I’d never heard of Sabine before; obviously I’d heard of Freud and Jung, but I didn’t really know anything about them — I vaguely knew it was about sex and that parents get blamed an awful lot, but apart from that I didn’t really know anything. So as soon as I knew that I was gonna do it I phoned Christopher [Hampton, the screenwriter of both Atonement and Method] and said, ‘Just help, please!’”

The scenes in which her character is hysterical: “I sat in my bathroom for a couple of hours and pulled faces at myself… I wanted it to be distorting; I think it’s important that it was shocking… Actually, reading about it, doing research into it, we took it down quite a few notches than what I think it would have been, because a lot of the stuff that you read — you just think, ‘Nobody would believe it!’ It’s really extreme.”

Almost turning down the film because of the spanking scenes: “When I first read the script, I thought, ‘The script was fascinating, and it’s David, and I really want to work with David, but I read those two scenes and just went, ‘I don’t think that I can do that,’ particularly because it’s the age of the Internet; it’s gonna be everywhere; I don’t want that out there’… I phoned him up to really turn it down… I said to him, ‘Look, I love you, I love the script, I love the character, but I really don’t know that I can play those scenes’… He said, ‘Look, if I’m gonna do them, then they’re gonna be clinical; they’re not gonna be sexy, they’re not gonna be voyeuristic in that way.’ And I thought, ‘Okay, well I can understand that. As long as it’s clinical and it’s not some, sort of, weird sexy spanking thing.’”

Executing the spanking scenes: “There was a box which he hit, so he was nowhere near me, thank God! I did actually say to Michael before one of the scenes — I was like, ‘I’ve got a security guard outside. You touch me and he’s gonna break your legs!’ And he was like, ‘Keira, you’re tied to a bed. You’re not really in a position to say that.’ I said, ‘I guess you’re right.’… [I did] a couple of shots of vodka — definitely — beforehand, and then a couple of glasses of champagne as a celebration of never having to do that again!”

[From The Hollywood Reporter]

Jesus H. THAT is my new happy place, imagining Michael Fassbender saying, “You’re tied to a bed. You’re not really in a position to say that.” DEAR GOD. I don’t understand women like Keira. How can she do those scenes without rolling over and begging Michael to take her roughly against the period canopy bed in front of God, David Cronenberg and assorted Teamsters? Please, explain it to me, Keira. Does it involve holding hands and being extra “friendly” with Viggo Mortensen?

Photos courtesy of Fame, WENN.

I avoided writing about the promotional rounds for A Dangerous Method at the Toronto Film Festival because my Michael Fassbender wasn’t there. He had to pull out of the promotion at the last minute to run back to Venice and collect his Best Actor trophy! So Viggo Mortensen and Keira Knightley were in Toronto to represent the film. It’s not that I dislike either of them – okay, well, Keira plucks my nerves sometimes, but I give her the benefit of the doubt more than some people. Viggo just seems kind of bland to me these days. He’s nice and everything, but with the Fassdong hanging around, who can pay attention to Viggo? Alas, Vincent Cassel didn’t come to Toronto either. Boo!

So, it was the Viggo and Keira Show, and my, don’t they look friendly. They looked very touchy-feely and friendly during the Venice round too, I just never mentioned it because… you know, The Fassdong. But here they are, giving each other little looks and holding hands. Do I think they’ve ever boned? I don’t know. I think Viggo might be friendly with everybody, and maybe he’s just trying to get the always-morose Keira to brighten up and smile. Or maybe he’s trying to get into her pants. I have no idea. I do know that Keira brought her boyfriend, James Righton, to Toronto. Keira started up with James about two seconds after she and Rupert Friend split.

Keira wore a colorful Wren dress for the press conference and photo call, and then she switched into the pinkish-beige lace Elie Saab for the Toronto premiere. I like the colorful Wren – Keira’s “casual-wear” has been very good lately. The Elie Saab is kind of meh to me. It reminds me of the spectacular gold lace Valentino she wore in Venice, but the comparison isn’t fair to the Saab. The Valentino was a revelation – the Saab looks like a doily.

Keira, Viggo, Fassbender and Cronenberg also covered the most recent issue of The Hollywood Reporter. The story is just the insider-industry version of how the film got made – you can read it here. There’s also a new poster for the film, with Keira’s big head still dominating everything. MORE FASSBENDER, PLS.

Photos courtesy of WENN.

These are some Keira Knightley photos from Friday’s Venice Film Festival premiere of A Dangerous Method, which continues to be one of the best-reviewed films coming out of Venice. Keira seems to be getting a lot of credit and a lot of attention for the film too, which is surprising, to me at least. Keira seems like the odd woman out, talent-wise, in a cast of supremely talented actors including My Fassbender, Viggo Mortensen and Vincent Cassel. We’ll see what happens when the film opens in wide release, though. Viggo always gets a lot of attention for his collaborations with Cronenberg, and I suspect that during the awards season, we won’t be hearing much about Keira’s performance.

Anyway, for the premiere, Keira wore this Valentino gown. I think it’s a weird choice for Keira, considering she rarely does this kind of full-on Glamour Girl look. The dress looks like a throwback to a different era, and I like the whole “floating on a cloud of gold lace” vibe I’m getting. I think the whole thing is gorgeous, and it’s probably even prettier and more amazing in person. My only complaints: the gown would be more appropriate for a winter awards show or premiere, rather than a film festival in the first week of September. Also: her eye makeup. I love Keira’s face (I do!), but her features, much like Anne Hathaway’s, easily go “squirrelly”. Keira should avoid really heavy eye makeup.

I’ve also added a photo of Keira in a casual navy shirtdress – she’s really working the Audrey Hepburn vibe in Venice, isn’t she?

Photos courtesy of WENN.

I don’t even want to discuss what is NOT happening in these photos. But I will, because I am a mangy Fassbender-loonie, and this morning has been severely depressing. There has been a distinct lack of Fassbender photos! Someone did send in a blurry Twitpic photo of my Fassie (here), and WENN only has two photos so far of my guy at the Venice Film Festival photo call for A Dangerous Method (the movie with Fassbender spanking the hell out of Keira Knightley). In one photo, it’s only Fassie in profile, and the other is a group shot. So… let’s talk about Keira. CB thinks she looks great, and healthier than she’s looked in the past. I think she’s gained a little weight too, and it looks good on her. But I dislike the flat-ironed hair on Keira – she looks prettier with her hair up, or fluffy, or just done some way where it’s not laying on her face.

Keira’s dress is Mary Katrantzou – I like it too. Keira can pull off this kind of style really well – she doesn’t have much of a bust, and she works that like Audrey Hepburn, in high-neck, fitted bodices. I kind of think the dress would have looked prettier if the entire thing was made up of the skirt fabric.

The following photo is just for the ladies. The ladies who love some homoeroticism and the idea of Vincent Cassel and Viggo Mortensen doing dirty things to each other (mm… biscuit tingle… now throw Fassbender in there… OH GOD).

Photos courtesy of WENN & Fame.

Honestly, we’ve been having a bit too much fun with the entire running joke that Jude Law will impregnate someone at Cannes. It’s such a ridiculous yet highly probable notion, and I’m completely unable to stop hearing Barry White music every time I look at these new photos of serious/reflective/professional Jude acting out his duties as Juror.

Admit it — you hear the music too, right? Despite Jude’s real-life (and well-founded) reputation as a manwhore, however, the actor laments that his days as an onscreen loverboy have passed. He points towards evidence of this fact within his new role as the wronged husband in the latest adaptation of Anna Karenina, according to Daily Mail’s Baz Bamigboye:

Jude Law is mentally preparing himself to play the spurned husband in Anna Karenina opposite Keira Knightley.

That’s not a role Jude has ever played on screen — and certainly not off it.

“I’m the cuckold. I’m the husband she discards,” the actor joked as we chatted at the official opening night dinner for the Cannes Film Festival, adding ruefully: “I can’t play the dashing young blade in films any more, those parts don’t come to me.”

Jude is sitting on the festival’s jury with the panel’s chair Robert De Niro and fellow Hollywood star Uma Thurman.

He told me he was excited to be working with director Joe Wright and that Tom Stoppard’s adaptation of Tolstoy’s classic novel was a masterpiece in itself.

“It’s an excellent screenplay, you just want to be a part of it,” he added.

As I revealed when this column broke news of the project last November, Keira will play the eponymous heroine, who humiliates her husband Karenin when she falls for handsome army officer Count Vronsky.

Aaron Johnson will play Vronsky. And Wright told me he’s hoping to also cast Saoirse Ronan, who was in his adaptation of Atonement alongside Keira, and can be seen on screens now in his scorching psychological thriller Hanna.

[From Daily Mail]

Aww, poor Jude! He does sound a bit regretful that he won’t be shagging Anna Karenina senseless as Vronsky, doesn’t he? Well, he can rest assured that playing the jilted husband will demonstrate some flexibility in the acting department. As opposed to, you know, the flexibility that he often seeks in his random and various bedmates. Fortunately for Jude, he’s highly in demand not only in cloakroom closets but also on the big screen, and we’ll see him later this year in Contagion: The Sienna Miller Story as well as A Game Of Shadows, which is Guy Ritchie’s follow-up to Sherlock Holmes. Remember, more paychecks = incentive to impregnate more women. Get in line, bitches!

The Empire Awards were held last night in London, and some interesting people came out. I’ll be covering the (hot) dudes from the ceremony in a moment, I just wanted to talk about some of the girls right now. I suppose Keira Knightley was the closest thing to A-list at the show, and she looked like she knew it too. That’s what her face says to me “I can’t believe I’m here, I’m so ABOVE this.” Of course, her face also says to me “I need to detox and eat something” so maybe I’m just reading too much into faces this morning. The dress is Rodarte Fall 2011 RTW collection – I’m having difficulties seeing beyond the unflattering beige to actually look at the design of this thing. All in all, it’s not the worst thing Keira’s ever worn, but it’s not really good, either. And her face! Yikes. Do you remember how fresh and pretty Keira used to look? Don’t even try to pull the “She looks the same!” card. This girl is dealing with something that is harming her physically.

Next: Lily Cole. When we last heard from Lily, she was boning David Gandy. For real. And when I put up some recent photos of her, her defenders were all “You picked the worst photos! She’s prettier than that!!” Um, really? This is how she chose to present herself at the Empire Awards. Yellow Prada, headband, vague expression. And this is Gandy’s type? Ugh.

And lastly, my favorite – Noomi Rapace! She’s the original Lisbeth Salander in the Swedish adaptations of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and the other two books. I love Noomi, and I love how pretty and girly she is in real life. I like her little black dress!

Photos courtesy of WENN.