Just days after playing the genteel, beautiful Elizabeth Bennet, Keira Knightley slipped out of her Jane Austen frock, submitted her tresses to a savage pair of scissors and became a shotgun-wielding bounty hunter.

This transformation from quick-witted 18th century gal to Los Angeles wild woman is now to be revealed, with the October release of Domino, a film about the Belgravia-born model turned bounty hunter Domino Harvey.

The release follows Knightley’s pert portrayal of the lead character in Pride & Prejudice, in cinemas now, a film which she completed only four days before beginning Domino.

In the film, which comes only three months after Domino Harvey, the daughter of the British actor Laurence Harvey, died in her West Hollywood bath aged 35, the British actress uses shotguns, breaks a girl’s nose with her fist and offers a lap dance to a pistol-wielding fugitive. She is directed by Newcastle-born Tony Scott, who knew Harvey.

Just what Harvey would have made of the movie is uncertain. Her mother, the 1960s Vogue model Paulene Stone, played by Jacqueline Bisset in the film, was quoted as saying that she wanted “absolutely nothing to do with the film”, possibly because the plot for the £30 million picture, which also stars Mickey Rourke and Christopher Walken, is invention. It centres on a reality show and $10 million confidence trick against the Mafia. Knightley, 20, is the first to admit it is a product of the imagination. She said it is “a Tony Scott extravaganza-action-black comedy that is completely fictitious”.