Wigs, corsets, hoops shape the career of Keira Knightley

By Mal Vincent

Let’s talk about those corsets.

“They are necessary, of course, for the women of these periods. Without them, they’d be naked, of course, which is all right if the script demands it. I’m too skinny to get anyone excited, but I did my first topless scene when I was 15. For legal reasons my mother had to be present and agree. Since I’ve been working since I was 8, I regarded it as just a part of working. If it’s in the script and there’s no way to get around it, it’s all right – but I’m not just stripping off at will.”

She describes herself as a “tomboy beanpole” but is regarded as one of the world’s great beauties. Recently she was named as the new face of Chanel in international ads for the fragrance “Mademoiselle.”

For “Pirates,” she decided to “do a Scarlett O’Hara thing” and get the corseted waist down to 18½ inches. “I lasted for five minutes. The cleavage was fantastic, but I needed oxygen more than cleavage.”

For “The Duchess,” though, the costumes were imperative. “I was literally sewn into those dresses. Because of that and the hoops, I couldn’t fit into the loo at all. I just had to hang on all day.”

As for the wigs: “When I’d walk by, members of the crew would yell, 'TIMBER!’ What was this woman thinking? I mean, you couldn’t nod your head.”

She is playing Georgiana Spencer, the Duchess of Devonshire, a distant ancestor (great, great, great, great aunt) of Princess Diana. The two women had parallel lives in that they both were extremely popular with the masses and the press, and they both had trouble with their husbands. “We never thought of Diana in making this movie,” Knightley says. “It just wasn’t a thought. Any parallel is coincidental, but I would resent it if the movie company tried to sell this by using her name. That simply wasn’t our intent.”

The film is not without sexual overtones. Georgiana is bartered to the highly powerful and rich Duke of Devonshire (Ralph Fiennes) at 17. She is raped on her wedding night in 1774. She gives highly successful parties and becomes the toast of London, but she is unsuccessful in providing a male heir. She takes a lover, a young Whig politician (Dominic Cooper) who later becomes the prime minister. But she gets something of a comeuppance when her best friend becomes her husband’s mistress.

“I refuse to think of her as a victim,” Knightley says, “because victims aren’t interesting.”

In a similar situation, would the actress allow her husband to keep her best friend as his mistress?

She thinks for a moment. She obviously has an answer but isn’t going to speak it.

“None of your business. I’m not answering that. Besides, I don’t see any relation between this woman and me. I don’t see playing a part as any form of self-expression. It’s, if anything, getting out of myself. That’s one reason why I like doing historical films. They provide a distance. Personally, I go to the movies to escape.”

The daughter of actor Will Knightley and playwright Sharman Macdonald, she was born in Richmond (a suburb of London). At age 3, she had an agent and worked on commercials. She got her first role at age 9.

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