Keira looks for courage in ‘Colette’
Keira Knightley on how her film ‘Colette’, out on Thursday in the UAE, about a renowned 1940s French author who wrote under her husband’s name, is still a relevant story today
At first, Keira Knightley thought everything was going to be fine.
Her pregnancy had been delightful, so she’d give birth to her first child and then continue working at her normal pace. A Broadway show and two films in a year? Try her.
But after Knightley had her daughter, Edie, things didn’t go according to plan. She was hormonal, for one. And tired. Because Edie never seemed to sleep.
Still, she intended to keep her obligations. She performed eight times a week in a stage production of Therese Raquin and then filmed a supporting role in the drama Collateral Beauty.
But in the summer of 2016, staring down the lead role in the period drama
Colette, Knightley decided she needed a break.
“I was like, ‘I can’t. I literally can’t,’” the actress said. “I am so tired. I am so hormonal. I can’t deal with this big character right now. So they very sweetly said, ‘We’ll put it off for a year.’”
Director Wash Westmoreland wasn’t exactly thrilled to push the start date on
Colette — “no one welcomes that news,” he said — but that delay ended up being “the best thing that ever happened.”
The filmmaker was able to spend the year finessing the script about the renowned French novelist, who initially wrote under her husband’s name until her work became so successful in the early 1900s that she fought for recognition.
Alas, Edie — then age two — still wasn’t sleeping regularly when production began in Budapest in 2017. But by then, Knightley had moved out of what she describes as the “Oh my God, how am I a mother?” stage and into the “I am the mother” one.
“Edie was a fairly regular presence on set and a delightful presence, actually,” said Knightley’s co-star Dominic West, who plays Colette’s autocratic husband. “But I was very much aware of Keira having to juggle the two roles of mother and movie star. And she did it pretty well, because it didn’t affect the work at all. But it did involve a lot of struggling off-set, I think.”
And it still does, Knightley said. On her way from London to the Toronto International Film Festival, where Colette screened after premiering earlier this year at Sundance, she was seated next to the actress Rosamund Pike on the plane.
“And my first question was, ‘So, what the [hell] do you do when they go to
school? How are you dealing with this?” Knightley said. (Pike has two children.) “I don’t think anybody’s got an answer to it. The answer to it is that it’s messy and really difficult, and somehow, you do it.”
Sitting in a hotel conference room, Knightley has delved into discussing motherhood even though it’s a topic she thinks the media generally mishandles.
She’s bothered by the societal norm that men serve predominantly as providers while women are expected to juggle both maternal and career obligations. Her husband, the musician James Righton, is constantly working in the studio — but he can do that “as and when he wants,” the 33-year-old said, “whereas I need a film set and have to go where the work is.” “[For men] we go, ‘Oh, gosh, yes, absolutely, of course you don’t see your children when you work, because you’ve got to concentrate,’” she said, her voice dripping with sarcasm. “Can you imagine a woman saying that? Can you imagine if
“The idea five years ago of being political in an interview — you would never. And now suddenly, the world is a political place with Brexit in England, with Trump.” KEIRA KNIGHTLEY| Actress
I went, ‘Oh, no, I just never see her’?”
Knightley spends a lot of time thinking about gender roles. Growing up, when she began to think about an acting career, it was the male parts she dreamt of having. At age 12, she spent one summer obsessively watching The Godfather, dreaming of playing Michael Corleone. She liked that he was a morally ambiguous hero.
FINDING A HEROINE
“So I’ve always been looking for my heroes. I know the guys, but I don’t know the women,” she said. “I’m using heroes instead of heroines, because in my head, heroines are still second to a man.”
Colette, she felt, was a hero. Knightley wanted a bit of her courage and felt like she was “standing tall” when she embodied her. “Women feel shame or that we should hide in so many ways — parts of our personality that aren’t feminine enough or what we’re meant to be,” she said. “And with Colette, she just went, ‘Boom, this is what I am.’ I love that. I don’t think I’m that strong. I think I’ve still got a bit of, ‘Oh, [hell]. I want to say the right thing.’”
In the past year, in particular, Knightley said she’s been grappling with how much to use her voice. She’s happy to be asked about “more than lip gloss” — she’s been a face of Chanel for a decade now — but it’s new to her. “The idea five years ago of being political in an interview — you would never,” she said. “And now suddenly, the world is a political place with Brexit in England, with Trump.”