A new production of King Lear is beginning to look like an incredibly promising Shakespeare film. As we reported last month, Anthony Hopkins is set to tackle one of the Bard’s most tortured characters, with Keira Knightley and Gwyneth Paltrow singing on to play his daughters. The only thing is, Lear has three daughters.

Enter Naomi Watts, whom The Guardian confirms will play the eldest of the three girls. I guess Mom must’ve been quite a looker if these are her three girls…because they didn’t get it from the King.

Don’t expect a big, glitzy Shakespeare, though, just because the actors are all Academy Award nominees and movie stars in their own right. Director Joshua Michael Stern told the paper, “The one thing that I’m staying away from is stunt casting. So there won’t be the American comedian, but there will be some really great actors playing smaller roles that will make a lot of sense,” he said, taking a shot at Kenneth Branagh’s Hamlet, which featured both Billy Crystal and Robin Williams in small roles.

“I’m not very fond of the modern adaptations… It’s pre-Roman, Celtic, very raw,” Stern continued. “It’s a period in British history, from which (J.R.R.) Tolkien took a lot of his inspiration, where there were thatched-roof roundhouses and fortresses.”

This description reminds me a lot of the Zeffirelli/Mel Gibson Hamlet, which is sparse, dark, and seems very authentic. I love the Branagh Hamlet, which moved the setting around a bit and was the first full version of the play ever filmed. King Lear is probably even more desperate and depressing than Hamlet, so the right setting can really help establish things for the actors. And that’s one hell of a competent cast.

The best news out of all of this is that there isn’t really a definitive film version of Lear, one of Shakespeare’s best works. This one could be on its way to filling that role.

Keira Knightley has vowed to continue starring in smaller British films and not solely concentrate on bigger budget American fare.

“What’s wonderful about being an actor is I’ve had the opportunity to do ridiculously huge piratical adventures and then do something that’s much smaller and intimate,” Knightley told Digital Spy, referring to her new film The Edge Of Love in which she stars with Sienna Miller.

“I want to carry on making British films, but the industry here is absolutely tiny,” the Atonement actress continued. “There’s definitely more work over in America. I think it’s important if you have a profile that can help get British films made then that’s what you do. It’s my culture, it’s where I’m from, so the stories are always going to mean more.”

In their stunning new film The Edge Of Love, Keira Knightley and Sienna Miller play two young ladies lusting after the renowned alcoholic and genius poet Dylan Thomas in war-torn Britain. Digital Spy hooked up with the alluring and articulate actresses in a swanky Kensington hotel room for an engaging chat about their experiences making the acclaimed and emotionally complex movie.

Keira, what was your first reaction on reading your mother’s script for the film?
Keira Knightley: “She gave it to me when I was working on The Jacket when I was 18 and I can’t even remember why, because she’d never done it before, but she wanted notes on it. But I thought it was a really beautiful story. You very rarely see films that really study friendship and rivalry and the complexities of a group of friends and how they can implode and how they manipulate each other. I thought it was completely fascinating. The fact that it was based on a true event and that Dylan Thomas happened to be one of the friends, I thought that was very exciting.”

Were you keen on playing the character of Vera straight away?
Keira: “Originally when I read it [the characters] were written a lot older - I was 18 when I first read it. So I didn’t even think that I could play either of the characters. But I gave the script to a producer just to try and help… and he said ’so are you going to play one of these parts?’ I went ‘yes’ and he said ‘which one?’ and I said ‘Vera’. It just sort of came out and I hadn’t really thought about it but I stuck with it.”

Sienna, you were cast as Caitlin after Lindsay Lohan suddenly dropped out. How much time did have have to prepare before filming?
Sienna Miller: “Maybe a little under two weeks.”

Was it a shock when the call came?
Sienna: “John (Maybury, director) and I had been great friends for years, so I knew all about the project anyway and I heard that there were maybe a few problems with certain… so I had an inkling maybe. But two weeks, which was not enough. Normally I’m a bit of a boff and there’s a lot to read especially as she was a real person. It was just two sleepless weeks… but I skimmed the book that Caitlin had written. I didn’t have time to prepare but in a way it kind of served the character because it’s just as free and as brave as you want it to be.”

Would you see Caitlin’s feisty, free-spirited character is quite close to yours?
Sienna: “Yeah, I’m pretty feisty and free-spirited I think. Maybe not quite as much as her! I think that’s pushing it, but I’m open. I might do a cartwheel in the pub!”

What was your take on the relationship between Caitlin and Vera?
Sienna: “I thought it was extraordinary for there to be two female leads and a relationship that isn’t one-dimensional. Here are these two strong women and they both stand up to each other. It’s really rare to find women who are well written, let alone two in the same film. So it was kind of bliss, and to work with Keira because we’re really close.”

Caitlin endures such an emotionally and physically harrowing time. Was it hard to get the character out of your head when the cameras stopped rolling?
Sienna: “I think inevitably, and this is something I’ve realised the more I’ve worked, it comes home with you if you’re being someone for twelve to fourteen hours a day. Whether you like it or not… you’re affected by the spirit of the person you’re playing, whether it’s invented or they existed.”

Keira, how sympathetic did you find the central characters?
Keira: “I find them all sympathetic. I think that’s what’s very clever about the whole film. We’re not trying to deal with one-dimensional characters, we’re trying to deal with deeply complex beings that hurt each other, that make mistakes. I thought what was wonderful about the writing was that you can empathise with all of them whilst realising that what they do is sometimes not right - you know I think it’s entirely understandable. I think that’s part of the challenge, particularly in playing Dylan, because he could have just been a bastard. And it was really important that you understand why these two women fall in love with him. I found the whole thing fascinating and sympathetic and risible at the same time.”

Having worked on bigger productions was it refreshing to work on a smaller scale for The Edge Of Love?
Keira: “Yeah definitely, I loved it. What’s wonderful about being an actor is I’ve had the opportunity to do ridiculously huge piratical adventures and then do something that’s much smaller and intimate. I want to carry on making British films, but the industry here is absolutely tiny. There’s definitely more work over in America. I think it’s important if you have a profile that can help get British films made then that’s what you do. It’s my culture, it’s where I’m from, so the stories are always going to mean more.”

Did you still have to contend with the press when filming in rural Wales?
Keira: “We did have paparazzi falling out of trees. It was actually really difficult and if you have a big film then you can deal with the amount of media attention. When you’re on a tiny little film it is really difficult - there were occasions when there were more photographers than cast and crew members, which was just extraordinary. But yes I suppose - I grit my teeth when I say this - but I suppose it comes with the territory, it’s part of the job and you just grin and smile through it.”

Sienna, was it a conscious move to find a role in an escapist blockbuster like G.I. Joe after finishing The Edge Of Love?
Sienna: “I like the variety. I’ve never been in anything like that and the idea of running around with guns and two MP-7 rifles shooting and sprinting - it was just a new experience that came my way. I’m not an idiot and I do get that there is a strategy to some degree, in that the industry we’re in now you have to be in a film that is incredibly successful commercially in order to be in a good film that has a big budget. I love independent films, but it’s really fun being in something where there’s huge sets and everything’s exploding.”

A few years ago, it was the gamma aura of smugness that emanated from Ben Affleck, as if from some deadly isotope. Now it is The Pout that seems to induce that cultural spasm: automatic hatred in those who witness it. The Pout in question belongs to Keira Knightley - the default expression that has transcended time and space, having been witnessed off the 17th-century Spanish main, in second world war hospitals and just lately, 1940s bohemia.

Why The Pout winds people up so much, I can only guess: evidence of lazy acting, or a simpering need to please, perhaps. It looks fine from where I’m standing, though, and I have to admit I’m always surprised at the level of animosity Knightley seems to attract, just one K short of a lynch mob. The world joined hands in hating Affleck, but I suspect Knightley has fallen prey to more parochial British backstabbing. And, it has to be said, it’s predominately women who seem prone to taking an instant dislike. One colleague of mine spits fire every time her name comes up, citing a litany of reasons, invariably sealed with: “And she has the body of a 12-year-old boy.”

That is kind of true, albeit topped with a fantastically beautiful face - one with a genuinely ethereal quality that seems to repay the amount of photographic attention paid to it (compare Sienna Miller, her co-star in The Edge of Love, whose more robust, affectless kind of beauty has an echo of Anita Pallenberg and the Swinging London set that colours her media portrayal). But, say Knightley’s detractors (and it’s hard not to zero in on a note of jealousy), it’s her beauty - set against minimal acting ability - that has put her at the top of the industry, and it’s her only asset. The signature pout is just rubbing it in.

I always find it interesting when loathing coalesces around particular people. After all, it’s easy to find a reason to hate pretty much any successful person. Knightley’s mannerisms can grate, it’s true, and there was a perception that Affleck had something of the cad and the bounder in him. Certainly, his cavalier attitude did him no favours, especially a brilliantly misjudged bit of meta-indulgence - the video for Jenny From the Block. Other stars do similar things though. In 2005, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie enlisted high-spec photographer Steven Klein for a 60-page “case study” on celebrity featuring their glamorous selves in W magazine. So there’s a touch of the arbitrary to idol-bashing: some get lambasted, some slip through the net. I often think there’s some anthropological explanation for celebrity hatred, our equivalent of primitive peoples who burn god effigies, exorcising dark emotions. In modern society, the undercurrents are still there, anger and frustration latching on to conveniently remote targets in stretch limos.

Does that make Heat magazine and its ilk some kind of 21st-century shaman, working for the benefit of the tribe? (They’d definitely be a more interesting read if they started hitting the psychotropics.) I wouldn’t necessarily go that far, but I do think the sacrificial Keira has had it a bit tough. Being from plummy stock certainly hasn’t helped her case in the UK, but she doesn’t seem afflicted by arrogance or self-regard. She’s admitted she’s made her acting mistakes on screen, and there probably aren’t many beautiful twentysomething actresses learning the craft who wouldn’t let slip the odd pout, or probably - on Hollywood productions - have a contractual pout quotient per scene.

For what’s it worth, I think Knightley has a frank, engaging screen presence, and that’s the reason she’s running ahead of the pack. She was game and far more feisty than Orlando Bloom (not saying much, I know) opposite Johnny Depp, who basically waylaid Pirates of the Caribbean for his own ends. There have been a few misfires - The Jacket and Domino - but Pride & Prejudice and Atonement both showed that she was keen to and capable of significantly extending her range. Knightley is probably the biggest current British-born box-office star we have - and a rare woman in that position - and deserves congratulation on that basis alone. It’s time the lynch mob was called off.

Keira Knightley didn’t hesitate when she was asked to bare her breasts in new movie ‘The Edge of Love’ - because she believes sex scenes are more believable when performed by naked actors.

The 23-year-old actress has no qualms about appearing in the buff, insisting nudity has even become a habit of hers.

She tells People magazine: “I always bare my breasts. It’s not like it’s only in this film!”

So when ‘Edge Of Love’ filmmaker John Maybury requested her to remove her bra, she was happy to oblige: “I said, ‘All right then.’

“It was very simple. It was a sex scene and I never like them when they’ve got bras on.”

Keira Knightley’s star seems ever on the rise as early success with audiences in films like Bend It Like Beckham and Pirates of the Caribbean have segued into multi-award-winning roles in the likes of Pride & Prejudice and Atonement. In The Edge of Love, Knightley stars alongside Sienna Miller, Cillian Murphy and Matthew Rhys in a film about the fiery relationship between Dylan Thomas (Rhys) and three of his friends. Already attracting talk of another Oscar nomination, Knightley’s performance is being described as one of her best. The script has been penned by Sharman MacDonald, Knightley’s mother.

You’re an actor who enjoys a challenge; what was the challenge of this film for you?
Keira Knightley: You know, it’s really funny, it’s actually really lovely to work on something that was so intimate, and small. And I think that it’s very rare to get a film script that has such good dialogue. So it was a real joy, because a lot of the time you spend on film sets, you spend it really fighting to find out how to say the words. With this one we were already at another level, because it just flowed so easily.

Did it help to have friendships with the cast before you started?
KK: It really helped. I don’t think that you can fake warmth. You can fake lust, jealousy, anger; those are all quite easy. But actual, genuine warmth? I don’t think you can fake it. And it was really great that we did all get on. We had a great time all living in the same house, and we felt like a proper unit. So it means that when you’re doing something that’s incredibly intimate, you’re safe to try things out and you don’t feel like a complete dickhead!

How did you wrap your tongue around the Welsh accent?
KK: We had a really good voice coach. Half my mum’s family is Welsh, and I remember when I was a kid, she used to read to me, and wizards and characters like that always had a Welsh accent.

Did it feel strange working on her script for this film, as well?
KK: It actually felt very natural. If you live with a writer, you do grow up with their words and with their fantasies. And I’ve pretty -much seen every single one of her plays, so I’ve been in a lot of rehearsal rooms, and all the rest of it. It felt very natural and very easy, and lovely to do that professionally, as well.

Were you looking for something of hers that you’d be able to collaborate on?
KK: Not at all, it was a complete fluke and accident. It was literally just that she said, “will you give me some notes,” and I thought it was beautiful and an amazing story, and just really interesting. So I was working on The Jacket, and I just gave it to one of the producers, thinking he may be able to give notes on it, or something. He said, “is this something you’re thinking about?” And I only really said yes cause he’d read it, I didn’t think anything would come of it at all. So yes, it was fantastically accidental.

Dylan Thomas is not that likeable in the movie, is he?
KK: Some people really just go, “Oh, he’s mischievous,” and other people go, “wow, he’s quite demonic, and dark.” So I think it’s wonderful that it says a lot about the people that are going to see the film. I don’t feel we should dictate about him, I think if that’s your view of him, then that’s wonderful. It’s good to know that other people think differently, and that’s what makes the characters interesting.

Do you think it’s actually even about Thomas directly?
KK: Again, I think that’s open to interpretation. But it’s not a regular biopic, where you’re doing a beginning, middle and end of Thomas’ life. A lot of time I have a problem with biopics that try to do too much in an hour and a half. So I thought the really fascinating thing about this was that it was looking at a very specific time, and some very specific people, and really exploring those relationships, and meeting up with those characters, as opposed to just one central character.

Was it nice to do this after coming back from making the Pirates films?
KK: Yeah, it was great, it was really great. It’s fantastic to have the opportunity to work abroad, and do all that, but there is a certain point where you’re just like, “Oh, I’d love to work at home.” I think once you get a certain profile you can help to make films, and we have a tiny industry in this country so I think it’s really important for the people that can, to get into it. So it was great to do something that was entirely British-financed, British cast, crew. I thought that these were genuinely fascinating stories; the British emotional mentality is a very interesting one. It’s my culture, so obviously it’s what I’m interested in. It’s great to do films here.

You’ve been cutting a swathe through various times passed in your films recently; do you have a favourite era, one that you perhaps identify with?
KK: I don’t have a favourite era, no. I’m very glad that I haven’t lived through the Blitz but I love films from that era and I find it fascinating when you’re actually looking at the reality of the era, versus what we think of as the 1940s.
Thinking about young people grabbing onto life with absolutely everything in them, when death is literally falling from the sky, it’s fascinating to think, “Well, how do you behave?” You try and live for every single moment, and every single thing and sometimes, you’ll make mistakes, but I find that fascinating.

As a time period I like to think about, and as far as relationships and emotions go, I find it a very interesting period.

Do you get sent more period stuff than contemporary stuff?
KK: I do get a lot of contemporary stuff; I just find it’s very difficult to find good female roles in contemporary pieces. I don’t know why that is. I find more interesting roles for women in period pieces. I do personally like watching period films; I think you can really get lost in the fantasy of them. You’re not judging it on a day to day, “I know this,” basis. You’re in your own role, and I like the fusion that that creates. But really, it’s about the characters, and I’ve found it’s just not as good for women in contemporary pieces.

At your height of Pirates it was fairly crazy with paparazzi. Has that all calmed down a bit now?
KK: Yeah it has a bit. I think I’m older and boring! I think it was particularly crazy when I was 18 and they were thinking, “she must fall out of clubs any minute now…” But I didn’t, and that’s really crappy, I think. It has calmed down, and now I’m doing a lot of very different roles, in a lot of smaller films.

What got you through that period then?
KK: I don’t know, to tell you the truth. I just didn’t stop working. I mean, I didn’t stop working until this year, so I was in the very protective bubble of film sets. So in a funny kind of way, I was never back for long enough to really notice what had happened. Any time I did pop up though, I thought, “Fuck, this is terrifying!”

So now you’ve got a bit of time off, are you going to travel?
KK: I just want to live life in general, really.

There’s every chance that Keira Knightley brings her own period costumes to movie sets these days.

Having made quite an impression in the likes of Pride & Prejudice (2005) and the Pirates Of The Caribbean trilogy, dressed up in her finest satin and lace, Knightley went positively modern — well, mid-20th century — for Atonement, before running back to ye olden corsets and petticoats for Silk and The Duchess.

And it’s back to the World War 2 years for this week’s The Edge Of Love. Add to all that rumours of an adaptation of King Lear, and a remake of My Fair Lady, and you might just start to think that Keira Knightley has come to the conclusion that modern life is rubbish.

“It’s just the best scripts of late have all been period pieces,” she smiles.

“If a great script came along that happened to be set in the future, or set in the world of modern car racing, or whatever, I’d jump on it. But how could I turn down Atonement? Or playing Georgiana in an adaptation of Amanda Foreman’s book?

“I can see that there’s a pattern there for some people, but it’s just coincidence.”

Funny, given the way the media has begun to accuse Knightley of repeating herself with all these period outings, I thought she might just have a bee in her bonnet about this whole pigeon-holing thing. Only, she’s not wearing a bonnet today.

Media

“Oh, very funny,” she says. “I think the media will always look for an angle, and it doesn’t bother me one bit. If I’d never done Love Actually, or Domino, or The Jacket, or Pure, well, then I might be worried.”

In The Edge Of Love, Knightley plays Vera Phillips, childhood sweetheart of Welsh poet Dylan Thomas. They meet up again 10 years later in London during the second World War, she now a singer, he writing scripts for government propaganda films. Dylan also happens to be married, to Caitlin, and Vera’s about to get married to her fervent admirer, William Killick. Not that that’s about to stop them …

Welsh actor Matthew Rhys takes on the role Dylan Thomas, Sienna Miller is Caitlin, and our own Cillian Murphy plays the lovestruck William Killick.

The man behind the camera is John Maybury, who worked with Knightley before on The Jacket, having made his breakthrough with the 1998 Francis Bacon biopic Love Is The Devil.

“John is a wonderful director,” says Knightley. “Very single-minded, caring only about what goes up there on the screen, really. He’s not one of those filmmakers, then, who tends to get on well with the big studios, but they’re the most interesting people to work with. There’s always a spark, a sense of mischief and discovery, with someone like that.

“And let’s not forget I get to marry Cillian Murphy in this film. That’s not something any sensible young actress could turn down … ”

Of course, there’s one other reason why Keira Knightley may have felt a strong desire — maybe even a need — to make The Edge Of Love. Her mum, Sharman Macdonald, wrote the script.

“Which sounds like a big dose of nepotism, right?” she sighs, “but, when it comes to family and friends, they’re always the most difficult to work with. I think it’s because you know there’s something more than just your ego or your reputation at stake.

“Your relationship with that person is going to be pushed in different directions, and you can’t just walk away from it. And neither of you wants to be the one who backs down … ”

Perhaps that’s why Knightley refused to play the role that her mother had written specifically for her, that of Caitlin Thomas, insisting instead that Vera was a much more interesting character.

Only, Keira wanted some changes done to the part. Including her turning into a singer.

“I just became fascinated by Vera, and her relationship with Dylan and her husband,” says Knightley.

“I thought I could do more with that role. Sometimes you’re just drawn to a character, and it doesn’t always have to be the lead. Besides, I had fun playing Vera, and Sienna did a great job playing Caitlin.”

And how was the singing, my dear?

“That was petrifying,” she says. “I had to sing Blue Tahitian Moon, live, in front of 100 extras. I had been to singing lessons, as I can’t sing, basically, and I just remember thinking, well, it was you who suggested Vera should be a singer, so, pull yourself together, woman, and sing.

“Don’t worry — there’s no album coming out soon.”

Looking over Keira Knightley’s fairly long and often illustrious list of films, it’s hard to believe that she’s still only 23.

From first being noticed in 1999 as the decoy, Sabe, to Natalie Portman’s Queen Padme Amidala in The Phantom Menace, Knightley has come a long way, baby, in a very short time.

“There are times when everything seems like it happened in another lifetime, to another person, many, many moons ago,” says Knightley, “and then there are other times where I catch myself realising just how much work I’ve done in a few short years.

Busy

“It’s the job of the actor not to stop long enough to look back, so, you know, I’ve kept myself busy through the past decade. And the great thing is, it doesn’t feel all that much different. You just keep hoping that you’re getting better at this acting lark … ”

And what of that wild and wonderful beast, fame? Cillian Murphy spoke out last week against the paparazzi for stalking Knightley and Miller on the set of The Edge Of Love.

“I totally admire them for putting up with it,” said Murphy. “If I walked out of my house every morning and there were 15 men waiting to photograph me, I couldn’t do it.”

“That is just part of the job,” says Knightley. “You accept it because there’s really little you can do about it. Other than ignore them. And try to limit their chances.”

Having reportedly moved to Paris recently to be closer to boyfriend Rupert Friend (who played Mr Wickham in Pride & Prejudice), Knightley is taking it easy after a busy few years.

“I went through a patch there where the Pirates movies meant I had just about enough time to make one or two others in what would have normally been my time off, so, I’m allowing myself a genuine break right now.

“My plan is to switch everything off, and just hide away for a while. I want to get to the point where I’m actually starting to miss the paparazzi … ”

The Edge Of Love hits cinemas today

Keira Knightley will begin extensive vocal training next year so she can perform all the songs in a new screen version of the legendary musical My Fair Lady.

When Audrey Hepburn played Eliza Doolittle in the 1964 movie her singing voice was dubbed, entirely, by Marnie Nixon. Hepburn was one of the movie greats, as far as her acting was concerned, but she couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket.

Keira is adamant that when the cameras roll in 2010 for the film, which will be produced by Cameron Mackintosh and Duncan Kenworthy, audiences will be certain that it is her voice they hear singing Wouldn’t It Be Loverly?, Just You Wait, The Rain In Spain, Show Me, Without You  -  and hitting those high notes in I Could Have Danced All Night.

In The Edge Of Love, which opens today following its world premiere at the Edinburgh International Film festival on Wednesday and its London gala last night, Keira sings several numbers, one of which I heard her sing when I visited the set last year.
She had to sing for Mackintosh when they met to discuss her taking on Eliza.
‘That was terrifying,’ she told me. Because she hasn’t yet signed a contract, she was being coy about mentioning the title of the musical. ‘I had to sing songs from that particular musical that I’m got going to mention,’ she said.
But Mackintosh, who has long held all the rights to the classic show, written by Alan Jay Lerner from George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion and with music by Frederick Loewe, knew how to get his leading lady relaxed enough to sing.
‘He was very nice and got me drunk before I sang,’ she laughed.
‘It was wine. The only problem, though, was I didn’t realise that wine dries your mouth out, so all of a sudden trying to sing with a really dry mouth is not very clever.’
Keira is willing to spend months next year working with a coach to improve her singing ability  -  and she has the advantage of being able to sing in the first place, although she’s had no training. Indeed, Keira never trained to be an actress either, and that’s an absence that she feels deeply.

‘It gives you a level of confidence,’ she said, ‘and I don’t have that level of confidence.’ And that, she feels, has got in the way on some films.

As an example, she cited Johnny Depp’s brilliant Captain Jack in the Pirates Of The Caribbean movies.

‘The character he created was not on the page and I don’t think I’m there yet  -  to be able to build a character in that way. So it’s been interesting to look at different parts of yourself that hold you back in terms of really trying to move on and get better within this particular industry.’

But I see her growing as an actress, and her performance in The Duchess, due out in September, will move even her toughest critics.

And yes, wouldn’t it be loverly if she reaches those top Cs in My Fair Lady all on her own!

The scene is an Underground station during the Blitz. Outside, Luftwaffe shells may be raining down on the London streets but inside, among the huddled masses sheltering in the mole-y gloom, something equally explosive is about to happen. Someone has rigged up a band-leader’s microphone and towards it come the pillarbox-red lips of the most beautiful face you’ve ever seen on a Tube platform. Keira Knightley’s astounding physiognomy is framed by marcelled waves of chestnut hair. Blue fingers of ferny frou-frou tickle her alabaster flesh. A gardenia fascinator is clamped to her head like a crown.

She bends to the microphone and, breathily and sleepy-eyed, she sings “Underneath a Blue Tahitian Moon”. Within 20 seconds, every male heart on the platform (and in the cinema) becomes her devoted slave, as her eyes and lips and hair and skin and voice construct a sensory web of enchantment.

Keira Knightley can sing? As well as play football (Bend it Like Beckham), wield a sword (Pirates of the Caribbean 2), fight with a Chinese jian (Pirates 3,) dominate a shower-room of steaming jocks while wearing school uniform (The Hole), rise from under water in an ornamental pond looking far more naked than if she were actually naked (Atonement), and pick up a Best Actress Oscar nomination at only 20 (Pride and Prejudice)? As revelations go, this one is up there with the shout-line “Garbo Talks!” on the posters for Anna Christie in 1930. But it would be wrong if the film that opens with this coup de théâtre were lauded for the chanteuse stuff alone.

The Edge of Love is a remarkable piece of work, a sublimely emotional wartime drama, an intense four-hander ensemble piece with a shoot-’em-up climax of gunfire and murder trial. The story concerns Dylan Thomas, the legendary Welsh poet, his London-Irish wife, Caitlin, his childhood friend Vera Williams and her romance and marriage with a British soldier called William Killick. Dylan and Vera meet each other in London in 1940, and an intense friendship is kindled between the wife and the former playmate.

When Vera marries William, the two couples occupy adjacent houses on the cliffs of New Quay in Cardiganshire, in blissful harmony. But when the soldier goes off to war, the others’ lives hit a downward spiral of penury, frustration and jealousy – and when William returns, a damaged and suspicious stranger, his resentment of the smugly lecherous Dylan leads to mayhem. William is played, with clipped precision, by the Irish actor Cillian Murphy; Matthew Rhys portrays Thomas as a sleepy-eyed booze-hound, but makes him a lot sexier (and less irritating) than history reports. Sienna Miller plays Caitlin as a hoydenish “free spirit” and chronic sexpot. And Knightley gives Vera an independence and complexity that’s aeons ahead of the spunky pirate babe Elizabeth Swann or the crosspatch aristocrat Cecilia Tallis in Atonement.

A curious detail about the film is that Vera’s character changed as the screenplay evolved. It was written by the playwright Sharman Macdonald, Keira’s mother, after she heard the story of Vera and William from their granddaughter Rebekah Gilbertson, who produced The Edge of Love. “When I was writing it, I always had Keira in mind for Caitlin Thomas,” says Macdonald, “because she has Caitlin’s spirit. Then she read it and said, ‘I want to do this, I want to help it get made.’ I said, ‘Yes, and you’re playing Caitlin,’ and she replied, ‘No, I like Vera.’” ………

That’s daughters for you. “I don’t know why I wanted to play her instead,” says Knightley. “But the first time I read the script, I was incredibly moved by Vera. She was a much quieter character than Caitlin, and I love the way she becomes stripped down, completely tragic and beautiful.” While Vera sings and dreams of stardom (”I think she secretly wanted to be Veronica Lake,” says Knightley, “an ultra-glamorous star”), her fortunes wane and her beauty fades – or as much as any make-up department can de-glamourise the divine actress. “There’s one scene when she looks in a mirror and suddenly realises she’s not the person she was. It’s a very real and honest moment. She was trying to get back to the person she was when they met and fell in love, and failing completely.”

Was it difficult for her, at 23, to play an emotional wreck? “But I don’t think of her as a wreck,” said Knightley reprovingly. “It’s more subtle than that. It’s about the passing of time and the changing of one’s outlook. I loved how quietly you see her changing.” Ironically, once the daughter signed up to the role, her mother set about altering it.

“In the first couple of drafts, hers was a very passive role,” says Knightley. “I think Shar [she always calls her mother 'Shar'] felt the balance of the relationship weighed towards Caitlin because she’s such a vivacious character, so she beefed up Vera to make them equals. She gave Vera a bit more bite.”

And, of course, she made her a singer. Knightley pulls a face when asked about her debut as a crooner. “My mum has always believed I can sing, and I’ve always told her I can’t. But she said, if I was going to play Vera, then I was bloody well singing.” Knightley briefly regressed into a sulky teen. “Yeah, it makes her a more interesting character, that dynamic of desperately wanting to be a singer and loving the glamour side and all that, but I found it fucking terrifying. But it looks good and that’s the main thing.”

If it bothered her, couldn’t another singer’s voice have been dubbed? The film’s director, John Maybury, who brilliantly evoked the arty demi-monde of Francis Bacon in Love is the Devil, came to her aid. “He told me, ‘Look – Vera is singing in a Tube station. She’s not a Hollywood star with a great voice. She’s not meant to be that good – the worse she sounds, the better.’ So I said, ‘Oh, great – if I hit a wrong note, I can say it was a character choice.’”

When the moment came for the Tube scene, Knightley was expecting to mime to her pre-recorded voice, but was told by Maybury to sing live, in front of 100 extras and crew. “I was shaking like a leaf, I thought my knees were going to buckle. In the first couple of songs, I sounded like a pubescent boy, it was so embarrassing, I could see all these faces thinking, Oh my God, isn’t she terrible. But then I had a couple of shots of vodka and it was much better.”

When I ask if she’d been watching footage of Vera Lynn or The Andrews Sisters, to see how wartime crooners acted, she becomes defensive, like a schoolgirl accused of copying her homework.

“If I tell you who I listened to, it’s only because it was nice to have them in my head, I wasn’t trying to do an impression. I watched Marlene Dietrich films and she was an influence but only in the way she stands there and doesn’t hit a single note. I watched the way she smoked and the way she and Garbo used cigarettes. My problem is, I always give away my influences and people say, ‘Well that was a shit Marlene impression,’ but that’s not what it was at all…”

It’s a remarkably physical movie, crammed with claspings and sunderings, the twang of bedsprings, the touching of hands. Dead bodies on the battlefield or the aftermath of London bombs are mirrored by the horizontalism of lovers and the girlish embraces of Knightley and Miller who spend a lot of screen-time sharing a bed for warmth and larks. The actresses’ on-screen rapport is very believable. Was it just good acting?

“I think warmth is one of the hardest things to fake,” says Knightley. “You can fake pretty much anything, but not that. We were fortunate that all four of us got on, particularly me and Sienna. I really enjoyed spending time with her, and I don’t think we could have created the friendship as well as we did if it hadn’t been there in real life.”

She wasn’t impressed by internet rumours that the film would feature some hot girl-on-girl lesbionic action by the two A-listers in the sack.

“Funny, isn’t it?” says Knightley, sadly, “how as soon as you have a film that centres on female friendship, everyone thinks it must have a sexual nature, whereas if you have two men in a film about male friendship, it’s fine, it’s a buddy movie, I think that says something about our society in general.”

Some of Knightley’s best scenes are those shared with Matthew Rhys as Dylan Thomas. Even as she prepares to marry William Killick, and the four friends celebrate and dance together, Vera and her childhood sweetheart exchange secret glances that may conceal old intimacies or hint at future ones.

In real life, Vera was ambivalent about the poet. “I had more fun with Dylan, and with Catty too, than with anybody else, before or since,” she told a biographer. “He was such a selfish little bastard, it was surprising to find him married to someone it was so easy to get on with.” So did Knightley think Vera was in love with him? “I’ve decided she was. He was part of her childhood and you always romanticise your childhood. I think she was in love with his talent and his mischief and who they were when they were small.”

The producers, I point out, and the screenwriter think they’ve left ambiguous the crucial detail of whether Vera cheated on her husband with Dylan. “You think that’s unclear?” asks Knightly incredulously. “After he pulls her into the bathwater with him?”

It doesn’t necessarily mean, I point out, that sexual congress ensued. “I very much assumed,” said Keira, with the air of one who knows, “that it meant something certainly did happen shortly afterwards.” Well, our social lives must be very different.

The immediate future holds a second movie release this September – Saul Dibb’s The Duchess, based on Amanda Foreman’s sparkling biography of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, which will see Knightley in a Marie Antoinette wig and a ton of rouge, married to the brutish Ralph Fiennes and failing to keep the hands of young Dominic Cooper out of her foundation garments. After that, she has nothing planned. Will she court more serious Edge of Love-style parts in future, or be seduced by more adventures with brigands and corsetry? “My options are completely open,” she says firmly. “I’m not a snob about pure entertainment. I love doing films that are challenging and provoke discussion. And I love films where you can let it all wash over you and cry at the end. My aim, if I have an aim, is to try as many genres as possible.”

Smart girl. And in the unlikely event that the phone doesn’t ring, she can always make an album called Keira Knightley Sings Vera Lynn….

Keira Knightley has paid tribute to Sienna Miller, her co-star in The Edge Of Love.

The Pirates Of The Caribbean actress praised Sienna’s performance as Caitlin, the role writer Sharman Macdonald - Keira’s mother - originally imagined her daughter would play.

“I couldn’t have done it as well as Sienna has done it,” Keira said.

She said she had no regrets about ultimately taking the role of Vera.

“I think that acting is a very instinctive profession and I think you have to stick to your instincts. For some reason when I first read the script I completely fell in love with Vera, in her subtlety, in how quiet she is. I don’t think she’s a particularly dramatic person, but I felt her emotions very keenly.”

Brothers And Sisters star Matthew Rhys spoke of the burden of responsibility he felt in portraying one of Wales’ greatest writers, and was even warned by his father not to mess it up.

But he added: “It was the ultimate dream part, to go home to Wales and to play such a part as Dylan Thomas. To work with the cast I did, it just ticked every box. It really was a dream job.”

Director John Maybury said he was “incredibly honoured and flattered” that his film was opening the festival.

“I think it’s one of the best festivals in the world. Edinburgh has been very good to me.”

The 62nd Edinburgh International Film Festival will show 142 features from 29 countries during its run.