Pass Notes No 2,700: Keira Knightley

Age: 24.

Appearance: Thin. So thin that an area nine times the size of Wales has been deforested to produce newspaper and magazines articles asking “Isn’t she thin?”, week in, week out, for the last five years.

Isn’t she thin though? Yes, but please let’s talk about something else.

I didn’t know she did anything else. She’s a serious actress. In fact, she is making her West End debut this week in Molière’s The Misanthrope at the Comedy Theatre.

Will it be a success? Financially, yes. Once Knightley’s involvement was announced the production made more than a million pounds in ticket sales within four days.

Well, the British public do have a notoriously insatiable thirst for 17th-century French social satires. Indeed they do, although this production has been considerably modernised. It’s now about a famous British playwright disillusioned with the vacuity and hypocrisy of the contemporary world and its obsession with appearances and celebrity.

What happens to him? He accidentally falls in love with Knightley.

Really? Well, no, he falls in love with a young, vapid and superficial American starlet played by Knightley.

And is she convincing in the role? The bloggers can’t agree, and the reviews won’t be with us until Friday morning, but the director’s happy.

How do you know? She told the Telegraph, “If you were an alien dropped into the rehearsal room and you watched everyone for 20 minutes and were then asked: ‘Which of these people is the big movie star?’, there’s no way you’d be able to spot who that person was.”

Because of the language barrier? No, because she’s so humble and hard-working.

Where did she get this alien? There was no alien.

Maybe she thought Keira was an alien? She is very thin. Forget the alien.

Forgotten. Isn’t she thin though? Yes. So what?

Do say: “It’s a role she was born to play.”

Don’t say: “It’s a play she was born to sell.”

Source.