Keira Knightley has weighed in one of Love Actually’s most polarising talking points.
The Oscar nominee played Juliet in the much-loved Christmas rom-com, a character who finds herself in an advertent love triangle when her husband’s best friend, played by Andrew Lincoln, confesses his love to her.
While his wordless declaration – made by coming to her front door with oversized placards affirming his feelings for her – is undoubtedly one of Love Actually’s most iconic moments, it’s also been criticised by some who felt the character’s pursuit of his friend’s wife was a little on the creepy side.
Speaking to the LA Times in an interview published last week, Keira insisted the “slightly stalkerish aspect” of the scene wasn’t exactly lost on her at the time.
“I do remember that,” she explained. “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 him like he’s creepy’, and I’m like, ‘But it is quite creepy’. And then having to redo it to fix my face to make him seem not creepy.”
There’s also the matter of age – there are 12 years between the two characters, which is not necessarily a staggering gap, until you factor in that Keira was only 17 at the time of filming (putting her closer in age to then-teenager Thomas Brodie Sangster, who played Liam Neeson’s on-screen son, than her actual love interest).
“I knew I was 17. It only seems like a few years ago that everybody else realised I was 17,” she quipped.
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During a recent interview with Graham Norton, the Black Doves actor summed up her feelings on the scene in three succinct words.
Meanwhile, the film’s director and screenwriter Richard Curtis has himself admitted in recent history that he finds it “a bit weird” in hindsight.
“I remember being taken by surprise about seven years ago,” he recalled to The Independent last year. “I was going to be interviewed by somebody and they said, ‘Of course, we’re mainly interested in the stalker scene,’ and I said, ‘What scene is that?’ And then I was, like, educated in it.”
He added: “All I can say is that a lot of intelligent people were involved in the film at the time, and we didn’t think it was a stalker scene. But if it’s interesting or funny for different reasons 1733839005 then, you know, God bless our progressive world.”
More recently, Richard admitted that, at one point, it was on the cards that the scene in question could have been even more bizarre.
