Thu, January 22, 2009
Keira Knightley signed to star in a film loosely based on the Hollywood classic Sunset Boulevard, according to Mail Online's exclusive report.
The 23-year-old Oscar-nominated actress will play a reclusive movie star who hides from the world in a Holland Park mansion.
Keira's leading man will be Colin Farrell. He will play a south London criminal, recently released from prison, who befriends the young actress.
Filming on London Boulevard, as the film is known, will start in late May, or early June, on locations across London and the Home Counties.
The actress Keira is to play once enjoyed a career as big as the actress playing her.
'But she's pursued by photographers, she takes medications and slowly retreats from the world, shutting herself away until this man from the wrong side of the tracks comes into her life.
'It's like a beauty and the beast tale', an executive on the film told the Daily Mail.
When Keira first read the screenplay, by Bill Monahan who won an Oscar for The Departed, she commented, 'This could have been me if I'd let the madness of fame and celebrity get to me'.
Keira described the film as a 'cautionary tale'.
Monahan said he wanted Keira to play the actress. He will also direct the film for Graham King, with Oscar-winning British producer who made The Departed.
Sunset Boulevard, directed by Billy Wilder, was released in 1950 with Gloria Swanson as Norma Desmond, a faded Hollywood star who deludes herself into making a comeback after embarking on a bizarre relationship with a young writer, played by William Holden.
The film features one of the most famous lines in movie history.
Holden's character Joe Gillis questions Desmond: 'You're Norma Desmond. You used to be in silent pictures.You used to be big.'
She responds: 'I am big. It's the pictures that got small'.
