“Matthew’s a man who is sexy in the mode of Richard Burton, with a bit of Alan Rickman. You need to see that kind of rugged beauty in Darcy, knowing that here was a man who walks across fields, climbs trees, and very much manages his own estate. With Matthew, you can see that etched across his face, yet he’s also got this extraordinary vulnerability. On the page, Darcy reads as being very cold, but Mathew is so vulnerable through his big manliness that he gives Darcy extra qualities.”

(Keira Knightley)

Macfadyen recognizes that wounded pride can both humiliate and spark an attraction: “It is terribly attractive when your pomposity is noticed and then punctured in public. It is infuriating and embarrassing and you hate that person. When Elizabeth humiliates Darcy at the Meryton Ball, he finds it incredibly funny. I mean, he is mortified and hates her but goes home and locks all the doors and laughs hysterically into the pillow. That is why she is so attractive.”

“When he was Darcy and she was Lizzie something happened and they were just perfect together. Keira and Matthew were just wicked together.”

(Joe Wright, Director)

“Darcy pops in and out of the film, so I wasn´t there for the whole time. I just sort of wandered around on set texting my wife, who was six months pregnant.”

(Matthew Macfadyen)

Mr. Darcy and ice cream, what else?

“I think, at the beginning, you know it´s that fight within herself of trying to figure out why she likes this person. It´s a relationship full of misunderstandings and pride and prejudice”

(Keira Knightley)

Hands, hands, hands…

The side effects of playing Mr. Darcy.

In an unguarded moment, Macfadyen­ calls it “the curse of Mr Darcy”. He and Colin Firth met for the first time recently and had a good laugh about the syndrome. But it wasn’t so funny right afterwards, when the only scripts coming his way were endless crappy romcoms. Spooks had already given him a sense of what it might feel like to end up stuck in one kind of role. “During those two series, I felt myself getting very sluggish and fed up, doing one character for so long. It felt wrong. After Darcy, I thought, ‘No, I’m going to be fussy.’ So I didn’t do anything for six months, just sat around getting ­fatter and fatter, feeling grumpy, getting on my wife’s nerves, and thinking, ‘Oh no, I’ve missed the boat.’ It might have been different if a well-written romcom had come along, but it didn’t.”

“Got all the actors to improvise as much as possible to give it a kind of reality and a freshness. I was screaming at Matthew at that moment to walk through and turn left, and trying to be heard over the music. The energy that you get as a director shooting a scene like that is just the best feeling in the world. The adrenalin of it is just incredible. That´s what we live for. Or at least that´s what I live for”.

(Joe Wright, Director)

Keira and Matthew back to the dance floor?

Apparently those two people in the middle are Keira and Matthew filming Joe Wright´s new film, Anna Karenina.

“Mr. Darcy, who was leaning against the mantelpiece with his eyes fixed on her face, seemed to catch her words with no less resentment than surprise. His complexion became pale with anger, and the disturbance of his mind was visible in every feature. He was struggling for the appearance of composure, and would not open his lips till he believed himself to have attained it. The pause was to Elizabeth’s feelings dreadful.”

(Pride and prejudice, Chapter 34)