Keira Knightley loves period films, hates corsets

updated 1:49 p.m. ET Sept. 16, 2008

TORONTO - Keira Knightley is happy to reign as Hollywood’s current queen of the costume drama. She just wishes that playing dress-up in period outfits could be a bit more comfortable.

Knightley delivers her latest historical pageant with “The Duchess,” a saga of the 18th century equivalent of a tabloid celebrity who happens to be an ancestor of Princess Diana.

The story of Georgiana Spencer holds notable parallels to the tragedy of Diana. Both were adored by the public. Both saw their fairy-tale romances with men at the apex of Britain’s aristocracy devolve into loveless marriages. Both sought escape and diversion with social causes, high-profile friendships and dalliances that hurtled them into the center of scandals.

Knightley knew nothing of the blood relation between Georgiana and Diana when she first read the screenplay for “The Duchess,” based on the biography “Georgiana: Duchess of Devonshire.” The film opens Friday.

Just 11 years old when Diana died and coming from a family immersed in political theater, not celebrity gossip, Knightley preferred to think of the connection as nothing more than a footnote.

“It absolutely wasn’t what I was thinking as far as this film went,” Knightley, 23, said in an interview at the Toronto International Film Festival, where “The Duchess” premiered. “I thought it was an interesting piece of trivia that they were related. ...

“Probably with this character, you could draw parallels to very many different famous women throughout the ages. You could kind of do a Marilyn Monroe thing. In a stretch, you could say Josephine Bonaparte and Marie Antoinette. But I kind of think she’s interesting enough that you don’t need to draw parallels, actually. If I wanted to make a Diana biography, I’d make a Diana biography. This is a Georgiana biography.”

At ease in period stories
While Knightley has done contemporary stories and hopes to do more, she has made a specialty of historical pageants with films such as the “Pirates of the Caribbean” blockbusters, “Atonement,” “Silk,” “King Arthur” and “Pride & Prejudice,” which earned her an Academy Award nomination for best actress.

“The Duchess” co-star Ralph Fiennes said Knightley imbues historical characters with a naturalism that makes them seem real and immediate.

“I don’t think there’s a way to play a period film. I think people had the same bodily functions then as they did now. People got drunk, went to the bathroom, ate too much garlic, whatever,” Fiennes said.

With Knightley, “it has to do with her inner spirit, really, her intelligence,” Fiennes said. “Why she works is that she just loves that character. She’s completely comfortable playing it. You could take all the clothes away, and it has to do with her belief in the character.”

Saul Dibb, who directed “The Duchess,” said Knightley possesses many of the qualities that made Georgiana such a star on the 18th-century social scene.

“She is kind of a similar force of nature, in a way. She does have this incredible spirit and passion and charisma. She’s incredibly quick-thinking and way ahead of her years,” Dibb said.

Knightley said she likes the fantasy aspect of drama set in the past. It helps put some distance between herself and the characters she plays.

The old-time trappings — constricting corsets and suffocating gowns — were a hardship, however.

“Positively awful. They were made in very much the same way they were made back then,” Knightley said. “I think probably their corsets would have been tighter. Because I said, ‘If I’ve got to stand up for 16 hours a day making a film, then can I please be able to breathe a little bit? It would be really helpful.”’

“It’s not really a surprise we were known as the weaker sex, because you literally cannot get a breath. So it’s sort of, as soon as you start getting emotional, if you’re doing an emotional scene, you can’t calm down. You can’t literally draw a breath to try and center yourself again,” she said. “It’s no wonder they were sort of fainting all over the place.”

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