Keira Knightley loves period films, hates corsets

Story of an unhappy marriage
Georgiana Spencer was 17 when her parents arranged a dream marriage to one of the most powerful men in the British Empire, the Duke of Devonshire (Fiennes).

The duke was the prince of cold fish, interested in his beautiful, accomplished bride only for one thing: to produce a male heir. While the duke sleeps around with any other women he desires, he grows more and more impatient as Georgiana delivers two baby girls and miscarries his prospective sons.

Georgiana finds solace in her status as Britain’s fashion goddess and as a political operative, backing progressive candidates including future Prime Minister Charles Grey (Dominic Cooper), a childhood friend who becomes the love of her life in a scandal that threatens to destroy her.

Knightley figures Georgiana made such a show out of her public appearances because her home life was so unhappy.

“She needed attention because the marriage is so not working. She is a complete failure within it because the one thing she was meant to do was get married and produce an heir, and it’s the one thing she can’t do,” Knightley said. “Because of that, you kind of go out and try to prove that everybody else loves you. Nobody else minds that you’re this failure, apart from every single time you come home, you have to face it.”

Inspired by her parents
Knightley grew up around theater people, her father an actor and her mother a playwright, both involved in political theater.

“It was an amazingly powerful thing to see these people who really believed in the place of art, the place of theater in particular, in making a stand against something,” Knightley said. “It was incredibly powerful, so I think it’s always been what I wanted to do.”

Knightley hasn’t settled on her next film, but a couple of potential projects that interest her would extend her reign as costume-drama queen. One is playing Cordelia in a big-screen version of “King Lear,” and the other is a remake of “My Fair Lady,” with Knightley taking on the Audrey Hepburn role as a flower girl transformed by a linguist into the belle of British society.

Neither is definite, but Knightley would be game for both, even if it meant subjecting herself to inevitable comparisons with Hepburn.

“Any role is terrifying,” Knightley said. “This would be particularly terrifying because it’s a remake. It would be particularly terrifying because it’s a musical. But I think you have to look failure in the face and admit that it’s going to happen, and that’s not a reason not to try something.”

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