Love Actually might have been one of the films that helped Keira Knightley break through, but she’s revealed that it’s not in her movie rotation over the Christmas period.
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The star, who most recently played undercover assassin Helen Webb in the Netflix spy thriller series Black Doves, revealed on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon that she’s never seen the holiday classic since its premiere.
On Monday (December 9), Fallon mentioned that she was one of the stars of the Richard Curtis-directed movie, which he described as “one of the greatest holiday films of all time,” and asked her if she ever watches it during the holiday season.
“No,” she replied. “I saw it on the premiere when I was 18, and I’ve never seen it since.”
She continued: “This is nothing about Love Actually – I don’t really watch anything I do. But I know that Love Actually obviously has become this massive thing. And for lots of people, it’s part of their Christmas. But no, I’ve not seen it since then.”
Colin Firth, Martine McCutcheon, Hugh Grant, Keira Knightley and Alan Rickman attend the UK premiere of ‘Love Actually’ at the Odeon, Leicester Square on November 17, 2003 in London. CREDIT: Dave Benett/Getty Images
Rather, she prefers the 1988 action movie Die Hard, despite the ongoing debate over whether or not the Bruce Willis film, which is set on Christmas Eve, counts as a Christmas movie or not.
In Love Actually, Knightley played Juliet, who’s married to Chiwetel Ejiofor’s Peter – and the couple don’t realise that Mark (Andrew Lincoln), who is Peter’s best friend, is secretly in love with her.
On Christmas Eve, Juliet answers the door to Mark, who has a boombox playing a Christmas carol and a range of cue cards, with which he shows a message of love. As he walks away, Juliet runs after him, gives him a kiss, and returns back inside.
Over the years, however, some fans have criticised the scene and described it as “creepy” – particularly as Knightley was just 17 when she filmed the 2003 film, with Ejiofor and Lincoln respectively eight and 12 years older than her.
She told the LA Times earlier this month, “The slightly stalkerish aspect of it – I do remember that. My memory is of Richard [Curtis], who is now a very dear friend, of me doing the scene, and him going, ‘No, you’re looking at [Lincoln] like he’s creepy,’ and I’m like [in a dramatic whisper], ‘But it is quite creepy.’ And then having to redo it to fix my face to make him seem not creepy.”
Knightley further noted: “I mean, there was a creep factor at the time, right? Also, I knew I was 17. It only seems like a few years ago that everybody else realised I was 17.”
Last year, Curtis said that he’d cast somebody older if he was to have made the movie today, while he recently described the shoot as a “catastrophe” that took six months to edit.
Meanwhile, Black Doves, which came out on December 5, currently has 94 per cent on Rotten Tomatoes with critics near-universally praising the show. The thriller, which also stars Ben Whishaw and Sarah Lancashire, has already been renewed for a second series.
For her role, Knightley was nominated for Best Actress in a Drama Series at the 30th Critics’ Choice Awards, and was also nominated for Best Performance in a Television Series – Drama at the 82nd Golden Globe Awards.
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