Knightley on drinking with co-stars

Keira Knightley has revealed how she managed to leave her sinister role in a new drama movie behind her at the end of a day of shooting.

The English actress plays Sabina Spielrein, a psychoanalyst and patient of psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung, in David Cronenberg’s “A Dangerous Method”. In the film, Knightley’s character suffers from severe hysterical fits.

“Some say acting works like therapy. They may consider it this way but I don’t. My stance is that acting can have a cathartic function,” she told Austrian weekly magazine Live.

Knightley – who starred in “Bend It Like Beckham” and “King Arthur” – added: “It is even more important to do nice things for a change when performing as such a sinister character. We shot (A Dangerous Method) during the Football World Cup (2011) and went to watch the matches together at a pub and have a beer in the evenings together. That was great.”

Some scenes of “A Dangerous Method”, which earned almost unanimous acclaim by critics at Italy’s Venice Film Festival some weeks ago, were shot in Vienna. The film’s cast features “Hidalgo” star Viggo Mortensen as neurologist Sigmund Freud and Vincent Cassel (“Black Swan”) as psychoanalyst Otto Gross. Michael Fassbender stars as Jung.

Speaking to Live, Knightley also disclosed some intimate facts about her early intention to become an actress. “I allegedly asked my parents to sign an agent to handle my matters at the age of three. Well, I got one when I turned six. My mother is a scriptwriter and my dad is an actor. Agents came and went at our place all the time. I assume I considered my request as the most normal thing in the world.”

Asked whether she deliberately rejects lead roles in big budget productions after rising to global stardom by starring alongside Johnny Depp in “Pirates of the Caribbean”, Knightley said: “I certainly do so unintentionally. The kind of fame you earn through such a massive blockbuster is immensely uncomfortable. There were 20 guys at my front door everyday. It was absolutely impossible to go out. I prefer a certain sense of anonymity.”

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“A Dangerous Method” will be on at the Burgkino, a tradition-rich Viennese English-language cinema, from next week. The Burgkino is located at Opernring 19. It currently screens Steven Soderbergh’s new thriller “Contagion” and “The Skin I Live In” starring Antonio Banderas (“Frida”). For starting times, visit www.burgkino.at or call +43 1 587 84 06.