“I don’t only want to do costume dramas, I’d get very bored. I don’t only want to only do modern day pieces. I’d get very bored. The whole point of being an actress is changing as much as possible and that means time, that means character, that means size and place. That means absolutely everything. My aim is to keep interested, because if you’re not interested you can’t give a good performance.”
(Keira Knightley)
“This is the muddy-hem version. This isn’t just a frothy comedy. I think the comedy comes out of real pain and turmoil, and then, of course, it’s funnier. I wanted to be truthful to the core of the book. Here, the thin-frocked Bennets have to clamber past chickens and livestock to enter an unmanicured Georgian landscape, its shafts of sun thick with feathers and flies. A pig crashes through the kitchen, sizeable testicles on display; the mess of a family of seven clutters surfaces as a giggling gaggle of plain teenage girls squabble beside smeared windows; and a truly surly Darcy (Matthew Macfadyen) watches the locals sweat, shout and spill drinks as they stomp and trip their way through the commotion of an Assembly Rooms dance that couldn’t be more removed from the customary Regency bowing and simpering”.
(Deborah Moggach, Screenwriter)
“I hope we achieved expression of how difficult it is to fall in love, and how painful and how terrifying and scary to let yourself fall in love”.
(Joe Wright, Director)
(Sorry but I had to use this wonderful quote again).
“And how are you this evening…Mrs. Darcy?”
There are two endings to the film: the British version ends with a witticism by Mr. Bennet, borrowed from the novel; the American version ends with the two leads canoodling in a very un-Austenian manner.
“I think it seems like a perfect marriage. It’s the classic attraction of opposites, you know, pulling and pushing at each other. And fascinated by each other.”
(Matthew Macfadyen)
“When you’re young you think you know everything and you have all the answers. Elizabeth Bennet is a character who is experiencing things for the first time and so she’s making mistakes all the time. She’s strong, intelligent and very witty, but she makes the most horrendous mistakes and sometimes you just want to shake her. The fact that she’s really annoying somehow makes her even more loveable.”
(Keira Knightley)
Jane: My dearest sister, now be serious. I want to talk very seriously. Let me know every thing that I am to know, without delay. Will you tell me how long you have loved him?
Lizzy: It has been coming on so gradually, that I hardly know when it began. But I believe I must date it from my first seeing his beautiful grounds at Pemberley.
(Pride and prejudice, Jane Austen)
“It ends in a ridiculously romantic way. And it’s all lovely! I refuse to let it be anything else!”
(Keira Knightley)
“It’s a story about very young people falling in love for the first time, Elizabeth Bennet is like 20, Darcy is 28. This story can only be told by people of that age because it’s about falling in love for the first time and it’s about not quite recognizing the feelings you are having for someone else”.
(Joe Wright, Director)
