Forget Keira Knightley’s two Oscar, two Screen Actors Guild and two BAFTA nominations, because according to Begin Again director John Carney, she can’t act.
In an interview with The Independent, Carney absolutely eviscerates the British actress, saying he will never work with her again. Begin Again was released in 2014, and it chronicles a chance encounter between a disgraced music executive and a young singer-songwriter new to Manhattan.
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“Mark Ruffalo is a fantastic actor and Adam Levine is a joy to work with, and actually quite unpretentious and not a bit scared of exposing himself on camera and exploring who he is as an individual,” Carney said about the film’s other cast members. “I think that that’s what you need as an actor; you need to not be afraid to find out who you really are when the camera’s rolling. Keira’s thing is to hide who you are and I don’t think you can be an actor and do that.”
Carney went on to describe his opposition to what he calls “movie stars” (as opposed to “proper film actors”).
“It’s not like I hate the Hollywood thing, but I like to work with curious, proper film actors as opposed to movie stars,” he said. “I don’t want to rubbish Keira, but you know it’s hard being a film actor and it requires a certain level of honesty and self-analysis that I don’t think she’s ready for yet and I certainly don’t think she was ready for on that film.”
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“I learned that I’ll never make a film with supermodels again,” he said conclusively, referring to Knightley’s ad-campaign past.
“Keira has an entourage that follows her everywhere so it’s very hard to get any real work done, and so I was very ready to come back to Ireland and make films that nobody cared about who was in it or any of that crap,” he continued. “I think the real problem was that Keira wasn’t a singer, and wasn’t a guitar player, and it’s very hard to make music seem real if it’s not with musicians. And I think the audience struggled a little bit with that in Begin Again.”
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