So, It Looks Like Keira Knightley And The Director Of “Begin Again” Are Never Going To Work Together Again

May 30, 2016 / Posted by:

John Carney, the director of Once, is out there pushing his new movie Sing Street and while he’s got our attention, he’d like to tell us how he pretty much hated working with Keira Knightley and that he learned he’ll never cast a “supermodel” like her again.

Begin Again starred Keira Knightley as a singer-songwriter type who gets discovered by a once-successful record executive played by Mark Ruffalo. Adam Levine is also in it and he basically plays Adam Levine. I watched Begin Again a couple of years ago after it came out on HBO or Starz or whatever, and I didn’t think it was the worse thing and I definitely didn’t call up my cable company and say, “You better give me a partial refund, because I just struggled through a shit show of a movie that killed pieces of my soul and it’s all Keira Knightley’s fault!” (However, I may have done that after watching A Dangerous Method.)

But John Carney, who directed Begin Again, thinks that main problem with that movie was KK. John started off his interview with The Independent by shitting on Keira right out the gate.

John was asked how he feels about the good reviews he got for his new movie Sing Street, which he made in his native land of Ireland, and he spilled this out:

“Well, it’s fantastic. I’m very surprised; it’s a small personal movie with no Keira Knightleys in it. It’s really rewarding.”

John brings up Keira again in the interview and he painted her as a supermodel movie star who came with baggage like a full entourage and the paparazzi. Keira is obviously not known as being a musician or a singer, but John still chose to work with her and then he shit on her for it:

I didn’t enjoy that experience of paparazzi and fabulous openings. The movie star world is not something that ever appealed to me. I like working with actors and I wanted to come back to what I knew and enjoy film-making again – not that I didn’t enjoy Begin Again but Keira has an entourage that follow 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.

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. And as much as I tried to make it work I think that she didn’t quite come out as a guitar-playing singer-songwriter. So I really wanted to work with musicians and actors that could play their instruments properly and sing and stuff like that.

John patted both Mark and Adam on the taint for a job well done, but he went in on Keira again:

I learned that I’ll never make a film with supermodels again.

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. 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. And working with the kids on this film and real instruments there was no hiding going on. It really was a bit of a journey of self-discovery for the actors in Sing Street and that appeals to me.

So it’s not like I hate the Hollywood thing but I like to work with curious, proper film actors as opposed to movie stars. 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.

Bitch lost me when he called Adam Levine a good actor.” – pretty much everyone

Okay, I’m not exactly the President of the KK Fan Club, but hell, this John trick makes it sound like Keira Knightley is brand new and that Begin Again was the first movie she did after arriving in America on a ship from England. Keira has been acting in movies as long (if not longer) as John has been directing them.

And he didn’t stop there. While talking to HeyUGuys, he brought up Keira without even being asked about her:

I like Begin Again, I’m really proud of that movie. I just think with Keira it was like asking her to do something that she could not do. I think these films rely completely on their leading man or woman. Mark Ruffalo delivered, Adam Levine too – they all did, because I wasn’t asking them to do anything that they could not do, but she could not do that. She couldn’t make the film seem humble. Had I got somebody who could kill that role and really deliver, I think there would be more continuity between Sing Street and Begin Again and Once – the three would have seemed together, but Begin Again sticks out a little bit, it’s a little awkward in the family of musicals that I’ve made now.

Did Keira Knightley turn his ass down in front of his entire family in broad daylight? Did Keira Knightley piss into the urn where he kept the ashes of his beloved childhood puppy? Does Keira Knightley call him every Sunday night from a blocked number and spoil Game of Thrones for him? Did John have the last box of Jell-O 1-2-3 in the world and was saving it for a special occasion, and Keira stole it and flushed it down the toilet? If the last one is the case, then I fully understand why he hates her, but other than that, damn.

And here’s John Carney’s favorite actress with her husband at the opening gala of the Teatro Dell’Opera Di Roma in Rome on May 22.

Pics: Splash, Wenn.com

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