Femininity through female eyes
TORONTO — In the midst of promoting her new film, “Laggies,” Keira Knightley had to dash to her hotel room to change. She had spilled her lunch all over one dress and so had to quickly slip into another. It was a stunning Alexander McQueen fluorescent white shirt dress with red plastic applique across the top. Knightley said she likes the way she could look down and catch reflections off the plastic.
Late joiner
In an acting career that started at age 8, Knightley has learned to make swift adjustments. With “Laggies,” the British actress joined the production quite late and had to get up to speed working with a dialect coach on an American accent.
When an actor nails a role, as Knightley does in “Laggies,” it’s hard to imagine anyone else in the part. Yet, indie director Lynn Shelton had chosen Anne Hathaway early in the casting process.
As Shelton explained at the “Laggie’s” premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, Hathaway was also committed to “Batman” director Christopher Nolan’s new sci-fi movie, “Interstellar.”
“She had to choose between our film and that one. She was really torn, or so she said to me,” Shelton said. “But she had the longer commitment to Chris’ film.”
Shelton admits that losing her leading lady “does throw you for a second because you have imagined one person in that role. You just have to go to the reset button.”
Knightley came to mind, although the actress is usually associated with costume dramas like “Atonement,” “Pride & Prejudice” and “Anna Karenina.”
But Shelton thought of her more in “Bend It Like Beckham” and “Pirates of the Caribbean.” “I remember being just floored by her physicality, her ease in the world and in her own skin and her sense of naturalism. She just felt so real to me on the screen,” Shelton said.
On her part, Knightley admired Shelton’s earlier films “Your Sister’s Sister” and “Humpday,” which had established her as one of the top two or three women indie directors in America. Knightley also understood that a lot is riding on “Laggies.” It would be Shelton’s biggest budget film to date, with established actors like Sam Rockwell and Chloë Grace Moretz already in place. So last year, shortly after her marriage to musician James Righton, Knightley agreed to join the cast and crew immediately after her honeymoon.
‘I could sort of tell’
“I had never met her before, but I could sort of tell she was going to do it the first time we spoke on the phone,” Shelton recalled.
The 29-year-old actress projects an aura of confidence. She’s like the most popular, smartest and prettiest girl in class all rolled into one.
So it comes as a surprise to hear her talk about how she identified with her character, who is in the midst of a belated identity crisis. (The title is a word screenwriter Andrea Seigel and her high school friends coined to describe others they knew who lagged in a sense of direction in life.)
“I could identify with all of it,” Knightley said, despite “the fact that I am English and from a completely different background. It doesn’t have to be that major to have provoked a crisis. I have friends in their late 20s who haven’t necessarily checked all the career boxes that they feel they should. People suddenly feel they have failed if they are not enjoying the way they are earning money.
“Add to that the whole other pressure of wondering if they are with the right person, and if they want to give away their freedom. It is an age-old tale, but interestingly one that you don’t often see from a female point of view.”
Knightley has had “great relationships” with women who have directed her before. “I can’t say that for all of the men I have worked with, but I have worked with more men. I’m sure if I work with a lot more women there will be somebody I don’t get on with.”
Women’s perspective
She appreciates the perspective women bring to a film. “They don’t want to show femininity (in a movie) as kind of soft and nurturing. They’re going for something that is more complex. It is interesting to see a woman through a woman’s eyes opposed to the kind of construct of femininity you get very often through men’s eyes.”
“Laggies” depicts a friendship rarely seen on screen between Knightley’s character, who is in her late 20s, and Moretz as a teenager. “Grace is 17 but still in touch with her girlness. She can be an instantaneous giggly teenage girl and also seems able to relate to a grown woman,” Shelton said.
The 17-year age difference between Knightley and Rockwell, whose characters become romantically involved, was never a concern for Shelton. “Keira is incredibly mature and Sam is young at heart,” she said.
“Anybody would go for Sam,” Knightley added. “He is unbelievably sexy.”
Contemporary roles
For the past decade, Knightley has gravitated toward contemporary roles. In her last picture, “Begin Again,” she played a novice singer who attracts a record producer’s attention. Called upon to sing for the first time publicly, she did so well that many have wondered if she will pursue a recording career.
“Nobody tested me. But because it was kind of folk music, you can get away with speaking the words as much as singing,” she said. “But I am not interested in doing it again at all.”
Her first major role was in “Star Wars: Episode 1: The Phantom Menace” in 1999.
“I have no memory of it whatsoever. Absolutely none. Isn’t that weird? I vaguely remember what the corridors smelled like and that the headdresses were very heavy. But I honestly don’t remember anything else. I could lie if you want,” she added with a laugh.