Kiera Knightley go spying in Jack Ryan: Shadow Recuit
When
the opportunity to work with director Kenneth Branagh on Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit came along, Keira Knightley jumped at it. The actress had wanted to work with
Branagh for years - indeed, she points out that one of his earlier films, Much Ado About Nothing, inspired her to
take up acting in the first place.
But
there was another reason why Jack Ryan appealed, too. Quite simply, she wanted
to have some fun after years of playing a series of heavy duty roles in films
like Anna Karenina, A Dangerous Method
and Never Let Me Go.
“For a couple of years now I’ve wanted to do either
something that is complete popcorn or something that is incredibly positive
because I got to the end of about five or six years work having died in pretty
much everything,” she laughs.
“Everything was doom and gloom and I just wanted to
lighten it up a bit so this was part of it. This is my popcorn, very Hollywood
thriller that I wanted to do for fun, that sort of thing.
“And it ticked all of those boxes and it’s the
first time I’ve been anywhere near anything with a larger budget since the last
Pirates of the Caribbean film, which was about seven or eight years ago, so it
was dipping my toe back in that water.
“But the main reason was really Ken because I was
really interested to see what it was like being directed by an actor when he
was acting in the scenes as well. I was fascinated to watch his process. So the
main thing was Ken for me.”
As well as directing, Branagh also stars in Jack
Ryan: Shadow Recruit, as Russian oligarch, Viktor Cherevin, who plots to cause
havoc on the world’s stock markets. Jack Ryan (Chris Pine) is a newly recruited
CIA analyst who discovers Cherevin’s plan to wreck the US economy and Ms.
Knightley plays Cathy, his fiancée.
Ms.
Knightley revealed that her links to Branagh the filmmaker go back a long way.
She first auditioned for him when she was a young girl, just making her way as
an actress, and always remembered the kindness he showed her back then.
“I met him once when I was about 11 years old and I
went up for Hamlet and I remember him being absolutely lovely to me. I remember
knowing that I hadn’t got the job,” she says.
“It was for one of the Players in his film version
of Hamlet and I knew I hadn’t got the job pretty much from the get go but he
still took the time to show me models of all the sets and he was absolutely
lovely to me and he sat there and talked about what he was going to do.
“And I remember appreciating the fact that he had
taken the time out, even though it was pretty clear I wasn’t going to get the
job, to sit there with an 11 year old and have a talk with her and treat her
like a human being.
“I’ve been a huge fan of his because one of the
films I got obsessed by when I was growing up was Much Ado About Nothing. It’s
a great version and I used to know it off by heart – I wish I still did because
that might be quite helpful one day but I don’t.
“I watched it until my video copy of it broke – I
watched it that often. I completely fell in love with it and for me that film
was such a huge part of me wanting to become an actress. He was always somebody
I had wanted to work with because how can you not when he has created a film
that you love so much.”
On set, Branagh switched effortlessly between his
dual roles behind and in front of the camera, she says.
“It’s absolutely fascinating but really strange
particularly when you are doing a scene with him because he will be going from
Russian baddie kind of psychopath and then he’ll suddenly switch off and be
like ‘oh OK, ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much and that’s a cut..’ and
being this really polite, quiet sort of contained director.
“And then on the other side he’s the actor, too.
And a lot of times when you are working you need to create energy so there is
quite a lot of banter that can happen between actors and so he’ll go in for
that, too.
“So there will be the actor banter just before a
take and then he’ll go into playing the psychopath and then he will switch back
to the director and you are watching it going, ‘wow!’ It takes a lot of energy
to do that, it’s quite extraordinary.
“And he has a guy who helps him, Jimmy, who keeps
an eye on all the actors, including him, and he is someone that you can go and
talk to, and he talks to, and so he has that extra pair of eyes. He is
fascinating to work with.”
Ms
Knightley has always loved well-scripted, intelligent thrillers and Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit has all the
hallmarks of the genre and fits the bill perfectly, she says.
“I’ve always loved thrillers and I love the
challenge of a thriller because they need a good storyteller to make them. And
there are very few thrillers made nowadays unfortunately.
“If you look back to the 80s and 90s thrillers were
all the rage and we really don’t make that many of them anymore so I was really
excited to try that with Jack Ryan.
“And you need a director who is a really good
storyteller to make them and so I was very excited to try it out and the fact
that Ken was directing meant that I knew it was in very good hands.”
Branagh has won huge acclaim for directing and
appearing in many of Shakespeare’s plays on both stage and screen. But, as Ms.
Knightley points out, he also loves contemporary stories and has directed
thrillers like Dead Again and blockbusters like Thor.
“And this is a Hollywood thriller – there was no
pretending that we were doing Shakespeare, we all knew exactly what we were
doing and he was very clear about it,” she says.
“And there was no guilt or going, ‘this should be
something different.’ It was like, ‘we are trying to make the best kind of
Hollywood thriller that we can possibly make. That’s what we are trying to do
so let’s do it…’ And I really like that.
“I like the lack of pretence and the clarity of
that. I was hugely impressed by Ken. And what I love about him is the acts that
his career has had. To be this guy that directed Thor and now Jack Ryan and
Cinderella next, the same guy that did all the Shakespeare, a man who is
generally regarded as one of the best stage actors of our time.
“He has done a phenomenal amount and his career has
had really interesting chapters and I think that’s always great for any actor
to see – that there are all these different avenues that you can explore and
there are different stages in your career.
Ms. Knightley also enjoyed working with Chris Pine
who plays Jack Ryan. Her character, Cathy, doesn’t know that her fiancée has
been recruited into the CIA – a corrosive secret in their relationship.
“I think from my character’s perspective the story
is about what happens to your relationship when you are with somebody who is
keeping a secret. Cathy doesn’t know what the secret Jack is keeping is but of
course the audience will know that he is a CIA officer and he can’t tell
anybody.
“Jack and Cathy aren’t married yet so he can’t tell
her but she knows that something is going on and so her mind goes to all sorts
of different places and it’s about the pressure that is put on that
relationship by that secret.
“And I thought that was very interesting because it
would put pressure on if you don’t even know what your partner is doing and
also, if she does find out, she hasn’t chosen that life for herself and
obviously it’s a dangerous life.
“So she is with somebody who has brought a lot of
baggage to their relationship and that can be very corrosive. And what that
does to a person and a relationship I thought was very interesting. And in a
broader sense, this film is an origins story and although it’s an original
script, it’s drawn from the books as far as the history of Jack and Cathy goes.”
The daughter of actor Will Knightley and playwright
Sharman Macdonald, Ms. Knightley was born in London and made her professional
acting debut in 1993 in the British TV series, Screen One.
Keira
Knightley earned
Academy Award and Golden Globe Award nominations for her portrayal of Elizabeth
Bennet in Joe Wright’s version of Pride
& Prejudice, based on Jane Austen’s novel, also for Focus Features and
Working Title Films. Two years later, she was a Golden Globe and BAFTA Award
nominee for her performance as Cecilia Tallis in Atonement, again directed by Joe Wright and for Focus and Working
Title, based on the novel by Ian McEwan.
In November 2012, she stars in the title role of Anna Karenina,
reuniting with Mr. Wright and Focus, based on the novel by Leo Tolstoy and
adapted by Academy Award winner Tom Stoppard.
“Jack Ryan: Shadow
Recruit” is released and distributed by
United
International Pictures through Solar Entertainment Corp.
SHOWING on
JANUARY 15, 2014.
NATIONWIDE
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