keira knightley (12 posts)

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"Champion" was just child's play. At least compared to Kanye West's next attempt at puppet mastery.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, the Grammy-winning hip-hop star has teamed up with Comedy Central for a new half-hour pilot tentatively titled Alligator Boots.

While details on the series are scarce, it's being described by the trade as "hip-hop meets the Muppets," and a different celebrity guest will host each episode.

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Pretty soon, Keira Knightley is going to know all about Last Night.

The Oscar nominee and perpetual-period-piece thesp is stepping out of a corset and into some modern-day garb, joining Eva Mendes, Sam Worthington and French actress Guillaume Canet in the new relationship drama.

According to Variety, Last Night centers on a young married couple who each face temptations to stray in the form of a business trip with an attractive colleague and a chance encounter with a past love.

It's unclear how the roles will be divvied up.

Newcomer Massy Tadjedin wrote and will make her directorial debut on the flick, which begins shooting in New York next month.

In other big casting news:

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OMFG. Consider the Gossip Girl word sufficiently spread.

The CW hit received a leading—and whopping—14 nominations this morning for the Teen Choice 2008 Awards.

Chris Brown checked in with nine nods, Miley Cyrus (who will host the ceremony) scored four nods, and perpetual nominee Justin Timberlake racked up three.

Timberlake is the awards' winningest artist, having aggregated 21 surfboards—the event's laid-back hardware of choice—since 1999.

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But her mother is simply beating a dead one.

While Keira Knightley has insisted ad nauseam that she does not—nor has she ever—had an eating disorder, the Atonement star's mom is just now getting around to reiterating what her daughter's been saying for years.

"She has always been thin," Sharman Macdonald tells the U.K.'s Sunday Times. "She eats like a horse. I always want to apologize because she eats anything that she wants and she does not put on weight."

Apology accepted there, Sharman. Now, if you could just get your daughter to apologize for that third Pirates movie, all would be forgiven.

Keira Knightley has succeeded in making a British tabloid eat its words.

The Pirates of the Caribbean star won close to $6,000 in libel damages from the Daily Mail Thursday, after suing the publication in January for suggesting that she was dangerously thin and was inspiring others to follow in her footsteps. 

Knightley, 22, took legal action after the newspaper ran a photo of her in a bikini under the headline: "If Pictures Like This One of Keira Carried a Health Warning, My Darling Daughter Might Have Lived." The accompanying story featured an interview with a woman whose teenage daughter died of anorexia.

"The article could be interpreted to have asserted that the claimant bore personal responsibility for causing the tragic death of Sophie Mazurek, a 19-year-old, who battled with anorexia," Knightley's lawyer Simon Smith told London's High Court.

Smith said that the insinuations were "entirely false" and "deeply offensive" to the actress, particularly as she has spoken publicly in the past about members of her family having struggled with the disease.

In a recent interview with British Elle, Knightley said that she comes by her slim physique naturally, and that the photos that sparked the eating disorder rumors were taken right after she had completed the physically grueling Pirates of the Caribbean shoot.

"It appeared as if I were promoting something when I absolutely was not. I am thin because that's what I am, and I was thinner at that point because of the work I do. Nothing else," Knightley said.

Smith stressed to the court that Knightley was not a "fitness fanatic," and that her weight has never fluctuated by more than a few pounds in her adult life.

"She considers it more important and has spoken of her opinion of the need to be healthy and happy," he said.

An attorney for Associated Newspapers, which publishes the Daily Mail, said the company was sorry for causing the actress distress and embarrassment and that it accepted that she bore no responsibility for the teen's death.

Knightley's mother, Sharman Macdonald, was present for the ruling and told reporters her daughter would donate her winnings, plus an additional $4,000, to BEAT, a charity that aids people with eating and mental disorders.

Fresh off her court victory, Knightley is poised for more good news with this weekend's debut of Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End. The latest film in the swashbuckling franchise is widely expected to open at number one at the box office.

Keira Knightley would appreciate it if other people would stop watching her weight.

In a new interview with British Elle, the 22-year-old actress said she was "completely devastated" by the anorexia rumors sparked by the publication of photos in which she appeared especially skinny.

"It appeared as if I were promoting something when I absolutely was not. I am thin because that's what I am, and I was thinner at that point because of the work I do. Nothing else," she said.

The shots in question were published by Britain's Daily Mail in January under the headline, "If Pictures Like This One of Keira Carried a Health Warning, My Darling Daughter Might Have Lived," with an accompanying article by a mother whose teenage daughter died of anorexia.

Knightley, who has repeatedly denied having an eating disorder, was sufficiently steamed by the insinuation to sue the paper for implying she was trying to mislead the public.

"Yes, I looked very thin in those photos, but they were taken immediately after filming Pirates of the Caribbean and I had lost weight," she said.

"I do a lot of action films but none of them are more physically grueling than Pirates, where we are filming in searing temperatures and shooting fight scenes in which you are wearing a wetsuit underneath a load of corsets. You are fighting with heavy weights in the water. Can you imagine a more advanced cardio workout than that done hour after hour?"

Even so, the actress said the rumors bothered her enough that she sought out a doctor's advice on how to gain weight.

"He told me that for someone of my body type to get to a [European] size 12, I would have to eat a lot of s--t food, stop exercising and drink loads," she said.

"Basically, my body type is naturally thin. There is nothing I can do about it."

If she could change her figure, Knightley said she would perhaps add a few curves, and maybe elongate her legs, but it's not something she dwells on.

"What I have does its job. Ironically, I'm learning to become more happy with myself as a result of all this," she said.

Though Knightley is not yet ready to settle down and start a family, she said that when the time comes, she's likely to drop out of the spotlight altogether.

"The celebrity thing is completely crazy," she said, citing the paparazzi that constantly lurk outside her London home. "I think I just have to move away or give it up altogether. I couldn't have kids in the situation I'm in now.

"I'm just not so hungry any more. I made a decision very recently that I want a life instead."

In addition to At World's End, opening May 25, Knightley has two other films coming out this year: Atonement, the big-screen adaptation of Ian McEwan's novel by the same name, and Silk, the story of a 19th-century French silkworm smuggler.

Next up, she stars in The Best Time of Our Lives, a film based on the romantic entanglements of Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, penned by her mother, Sharman MacDonald.

Lindsay Lohan was originally set to costar in the project, but dropped out during contract negotiations, leaving Sienna Miller to take her place.

The Mean Girl is out and the Factory Girl is in.

Sienna Miller has replaced Lindsay Lohan in the upcoming film The Best Time of Our Lives, after Lohan pulled out of the project last week, reportedly due to issues with her contract.

The film centers on Welsh poet Dylan Thomas (Matthew Rhys) and his wife, Caitlin MacNamara (Miller), and the events that led up to a bizarre 1945 incident in which Thomas' childhood friend Vera Phillips (Keira Knightley) and her eventual husband, William Killick (Cillian Murphy), opened fire on the Thomas home with a machine gun and a hand grenade.

Knightley's mother, Sharman Macdonald, penned the screenplay for the film, which is slated to begin shooting next month in Wales.

Last October, Lohan stirred up some serious buzz around the project when she hinted at the possibility of steamy scenes between herself and Knightley.

"Keira is older than me, but she kind of has a mysterious relationship with my lover and there's somewhat of a lesbian undertone," Lohan told MTV News.

Now it seems any onscreen girl-on-girl action will go down between Miller and Knightley instead.

It's the second film Lohan has opted out of in recent months. In February, she dropped out of the big-screen adaptation of Oscar Wilde's A Woman of No Importance in order to focus on her recovery after her stint in rehab. Jessica Biel stepped in to take over the role, starring opposite Annette Bening.

Though few actresses can match Lohan when it comes to generating tabloid fodder, Miller has certainly had her headline moments.

Aside from suffering through the public humiliation of ex-fiancé Jude Law's acknowledgement of his affair with his children's nanny, Miller was also widely criticized last fall for bashing the city of Pittsburgh in an interview with Rolling Stone. (She later apologized.)

On the other hand, she has yet to be hospitalized for exhaustion, check into rehab, get into numerous paparazzi-related fender benders or be publicly chastised by the producer of one of her films for bad behavior.

Which is to say, she has a comparatively spotless track record.

Up ahead, Lohan stars in Georgia Rule, opening next month, and I Know Who Killed Me, opening July 27, while Miller appears in Interview, opening July 13, and Stardust, opening Aug. 10.

Make no bones about it—Keira Knightley does not take the subject of eating disorders lightly.

The Pirates of the Caribbean star has sued Britain's Daily Mail for insinuating that she was dangerously thin by using a photo of her in a bikini to illustrate a Jan. 11 article about a teenage girl who died from anorexia.

The story, which featured an interview with the dead teen's mother, ran under the headline, "If Pictures Like This One of Keira Carried a Health Warning, My Darling Daughter Might Have Lived."

According to Schillings, the law firm representing Knightley in the matter, the article "made reference to what it perceived to be Ms. Knightley's very slim appearance," and suggested that she was indirectly responsible for the girl's death by setting a bad example.

Knightley has denied in the past that she suffers from an eating disorder, telling reporters at last summer's London premiere of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest that she was "very sure" she did not have anorexia.

"I've got a lot of experience with anorexia," Knightley said in July. "It was in my family hugely. My grandmother and my great grandmother suffered from it. And I've got a lot of friends at school who suffered from it."

"Whatever people say about my weight they are all wrong," she added.

Knightley's attorney, Simon Smith, said the actor will argue that the Daily Mail implied she was trying to mislead the public about whether she suffered from an eating disorder. Knightley will also seek to prove that her superskinny physique is not the result of anorexic tendencies.

The case is expected to go to trial in London's High Court later this year, or early in 2008, provided no out-of-court settlement is reached ahead of time.

Knightley is not the first star to go to court over a weighty matter of this ilk.

In July, Kate Hudson retained the same law firm to fight the British edition of the National Enquirer over an October 2005 story that claimed she was "way too thin" and looked "like skin and bones."

After denying that she had ever suffered from an eating disorder, Hudson triumphed in the case and accepted undisclosed libel damages and a public apology from the U.S.-based publisher of the Enquirer.

"The allegations that I sued over were blatantly false, and I felt I had no choice but to set the record straight by challenging them in court," Hudson said in a statement at the time.

Given the legal precedent in the matter, Knightley may soon have the Daily Mail eating its words.