Wor lovers

THE director of Keira Knightley's new film was forever telling her, "Shut your mouth, Keira, shut your mouth". This wasn't some running argument between the Bend It Like Beckham and Pirates Of The Caribbean star, merely all part of getting into character for the 1930s and 1940s set drama Atonement, the film of Ian McEwan's Booker Prize shortlisted novel.

Knightley plays a young woman, Cecilia, caught up in a hot summer of lust and repression that has repercussions for her and her well-heeled family after her younger sister's imagination runs away with her. It leads to torment and disgrace for Robbie, the housekeeper's son and Cecilia's lover.

Knightley adopts the very precise, very Thirties voice of Celia Johnson to give the role authenticity. But that wasn't without its problems, as director Joe Wright points out that today we often leave our mouth open after a sentence. "No-one shuts their mouths any more," he says.

"It's something he says to me all the time - 'shut your mouth Keira, shut your mouth'," says his leading lady.

The playful sparring conceals a mutual admiration between director and star. He cast her as Elizabeth Bennet in his Austen movie, Pride And Prejudice, showing audiences that she could do more than kick a football (Bend It Like Beckham) or swordfight (the three Pirates Of The Caribbean movies).

She was approached to play a different role in Atonement but held out for playing Cecilia, well aware of the problems of any film of a well-known and respected book.

"It's always quite daunting to do an adaptation of a book that people are so passionate about ," she says. "Hopefully, what you can do is present them with a totally new version of it. And if you can do that well, that's great."

As well as the voice, Knightley and the rest of the cast researched the period. "There's a great book called Wartime Britain 1939-45. which does exactly what is says on the tin. And we had a historian come in to talk us about what was happening in 1936. Joe also got us to watch a lot of David Lean movies, In Which We Serve and Brief Encounter," she says.

"A huge question was whether Cecilia would have been a virgin or not, and whether she would have had experience while she was at Cambridge. It was quite interesting to hear them. You wanted her to be a complete virgin but the historian said she probably wouldn't have been, She would probably have had, in her words, a bit of a fiddle,"

The 22-year-old actress also put her trust in her director while filming a key love scene with co-star James McAvoy, who plays Robbie, which takes place in a library at the family's country home.

As far as Knightley is concerned, love scenes are part of the job. "I'm an actress and it's very obvious in this film that that scene is incredibly important," she says.

"All you've got as an actress is your face, your body, what's inside your head, your voice - those are my tools, I have to use them. It was important that scene was incredibly erotic and passionate. You have to believe as an audience that the characters, based on that moment, wait for each other four or five years.

"Joe was brilliant. He totally storyboarded. the whole thing - the foot rising out of shoe, biting lip, everything. So we knew exactly what we were going into. You never see anything but I do believe it's ten times more erotic than most love scenes where you see absolutely everything."

Watching old actresses, especially Celia Johnson, taught her a lot about portraying Cecilia's emotional side.

"She has this incredible ability to not say what she's feeling but you know exactly what's going on. It's all inner conflict. In a funny way I found it quite liberating. It was more enjoyable to keep it all in. It was a kind of amazing experience."

Cecilia remains not always a very nice young lady, but Knightley didn't try to make her any more likeable than she was.

" I don't think that I thought she was a horrible person. What was interesting about her is that she's probably a very good person and going through this period in which she's being horrible to people for no particular reason," she says.

"You're looking at a period, the 30s and 40s, where the stiff upper lip was at its peak. She's certainly someone whose emotions are repressed and refuses to tell everyone what's going on.

"I think she's bubbling with emotions and rage and like a pressure cooker about to explode. I didn't try to make her any more sympathetic than she is. In the book It's quite clear what's going on, and I used it as a bit of a blueprint really. I totally understand why she was behaving in the way she was."

GLASGOW-born actor James McAvoy made his name in TV's anarchic drama Shameless, going on to become one of the most in-demand actors on both sides of the Atlantic.

Yet the 28-year-old says that, although he met his actress wife Anne-Marie Duff on the set of Shameless, making the series was a troubled time for him.

"I felt a bit of a fraud because I'd always felt that I'd fallen into acting. I was only doing it because someone had given me a job, for others it was their vocation," he explains. "I felt I was lying to myself and about what I wanted in life. It was Anne-Marie who taught me how to respect life and it took my career to a whole new level."

He says that his latest movie, Atonement, has been the finest acting experience of his career. He plays Robbie, an idealistic young man in the run-up to the Second World War whose life is destroyed by a lie told by lover Cecilia's sister.

"I loved the character of Robbie. He has empathy for everyone and forgiveness for everyone. Then something terrible happens to him and his world view changes from the most positive kind to a negative kind.

"He ends up fighting a bigger war than the one going on around him. He's fighting a war for his soul. It's been enlightening. I've learned and grown. The director Joe Wright has definitely made me a better actor."

Although he's a name in Hollywood, thanks to movies like The Last King Of Scotland and The Chronicles Of Narnia (as the faun Mr Tumnus), he's not about to hit the LA scene.

He owns up to a "pathological hatred" of celebrity culture, so don't expect to see him photographed with the likes of Paris Hilton. "I absolutely don't care about her and all that crowd on the party scene over there," he says.

"We're so obsessed with celebrity and it's terrifying, I just don't care about who's wearing what or the nightclub you stumble out of."

McAvoy just likes to have a job. "It's really, really nice to be working. That's the way I've always looked at it. It's always about the work. I'm very lucky that fantastic scripts have come up - you don't get them every day. I've loved the fact I've been able to do such a range of different things," he says.

"I always wanted to do an Eighties comedy and Starter For Ten came along, and The Last King Of Scotland was a different trip again. I've just appreciated the variety."

He's grateful for the opportunities but knows they can disappear just as quickly. The story goes that he only became an actor to avoid going in the Navy. Whatever the reason, drama school in Glasgow was a big change for him. "It was a massive culture shock, I made a lot of mistakes and when I think back to them, I still want to curl up and die. Hopefully, you learn from them and start to decide who you want to be."

He has plenty of other work to keep him busy, Next up is a quirky comedy called Penelope, in which he appears with Christina Ricci, and then the comic book adventure Wanted, in which he plays an assassin opposite Angelina Jolie.

Just don't expect to see him out partying. "I'm only doing my job. I'm absolutely not in it for the fame. Who I am isn't important, what I do is."

* Atonement (15) opens in cinemas tomorrow.