No.1 for Interviews - Keira Knightley & Sienna Miller
Keira Knightley & Sienna Miller

When the stars of The Edge of Love came to Edinburgh, Katie McKenna was ready and waiting to get the gossip and hear the highs and lows of working with family.

The Edinburgh International Film Festival is a sure-fire way to attract some A-list stars to our Scottish shores. Last year, the Festival kept it local with Hallam Foe, set in the capital and starring Jamie Bell of Billy Elliot fame. This year was no different. In fact, backtrack on that, it was different because this year we had super A-listers Keira Knightley and Sienna Miller.

Cannes’ loss was Edinburgh’s gain in 2008 when the Festival opened with John Maybury’s The Edge of Love, a biopic of Welsh poet and insufferable drunk Dylan Thomas – played by Matthew Rhys of Brothers & Sisters fame. It is a story of love, sex and relationships – but underneath it all it is a story of female friendship. This is because it isn’t really an account of the womanising and self-obsessed poet, but is in fact the tale of an amazing friendship that blossoms between the two female lead characters. The sort of friendship that doesn’t happen often but when it does, it changes you and every other friendship that follows.

Written by Keira’s Scottish mother Sharman Mcdonald, Sienna’s character Caitlin was originally intended for Keira. As Sharman penned the first draft, on the beach while her daughter filmed the last Pirates of the Caribbean film (oh it’s a tough life), she had planned for the role of Dylan’s wife, rather than the character of Vera, to go to her daughter. But as the 23-year-old explains, “I think that acting is a very instinctive profession and you have to be very truthful and for some reason, when I first read the script, I completely fell in love with Vera and her subtlety. I felt her relations very clearly.”

This is not the only influence Keira had on the film. In fact, if it wasn’t for her being such a hit in Hollywood, it might not have even been made. Keira explains, “Mum gave me a draft of the script and asked me to give her some notes on it while I was on set of The Jacket in Glasgow. And I said I could give it to one of the producers and see if they have any ideas on how I could get it made. He asked me if I would be interested in being in it and I kind of said I would just to get him to read it.”

But in giving up the role of Caitlin, Keira sacrificed what is in fact, the juicier role and as the woman herself says, “I couldn’t have done it as well as Sienna has done it.” This may come as a surprise given that Sienna Miller is better known for her wardrobe than her acting ability – if you saw Factory Girl, then you will understand. But in The Edge of Love, Sienna has taken the essence of Warhol’s muse Edie Sedgwick and, in the past two years, taken the hurt and anguish that is at both Caitlin’s and Edie’s core and polished it into a perfect, shining performance. Both these female protagonists experience the fun and glamour that a charismatic man can offer, living a decedent and carefree life, before emotions become involved and all of a sudden, the party’s over and you realise it probably wasn’t ever really fun anyway. Or at least, the only person actually having fun was him. Her
performance is even more impressive when you discover that she was cast two weeks before filming started, “It was based on real events but not factual ones and I would have loved to have done some more research but there just wasn’t time,” Sienna commented.

Even on sight, it would appear that Sienna hasn’t completely left her role in Factory Girl behind. Wearing a black and white stripped mini-dress from her own label twenty8twelve, the 26-year-old looked like she had stepped straight out of the 1960s when she met with No.1 before the official premiere. With smoky black eyes and a loose-fitting cardi, the only thing that brought her up-to-date was a pair of incongruous shoe-boots that perhaps would have been better left at home.

In contrast, Keira was still successfully channelling the 1940s look that she had sported on screen with a knee-length skirt and floral blouse. Thin but not skeletal, as we are so used to seeing in the press, in the flesh, she has an ethereal beauty and is
remarkably articulate for a woman of her age.

While the character of Vera might be considered an easier and less challenging character to play, Keira approaches it with a maturity that is beyond her years. The love interest of Dylan Thomas, this is a saucy role that you might think was even more challenging considering that her own mother wrote the screenplay and in turn, the sex scenes that her daughter would eventually play. “It’s a story about how friendship can be ruined over an act of betrayal in the form of sex,” Keira explains. “I mean, you’re not really going to get out of it, there is always going to be sex involved in it. It certainly didn’t worry me that my mother actually knows what sex is! I wasn’t found under an apple tree and my mother’s not a virgin!”

In fact, Keira is no stranger to sex scenes and insists that going topless on screen is all in the interest of art, “It was very simple. It was a sex scene and I don’t like them when you have a bra on. The Director said, ‘Take your bra off,’ and I said ‘Alright then!’”

If the sex scenes weren’t challenging for Keira, then having to sing on set definitely took her from her comfort zone, “I wasn’t particularly pleased that mum had put singing into the script anyway. I actually went into a recording studio before we started and recorded the whole thing. I thought that when we went onto the set, I would just be miming, but I found out on the morning of the scene that I was doing it live in front of the 100 or 200 extras and I thought I was going to die!” She continues, “My knees actually started buckling and in the first couple of takes I sounded like a pubescent boy. And then someone kindly bought me a couple of shots of vodka and it was alright after that!”

Thankfully, Keira did not feel the need to use alcohol to help her in every difficult scene, “I’m not somebody that goes with trying to remember something sad that happens in my life. I just try to stick with the story. I think that’s what you have to do and if the script moves you in the first place, then that’s always a good sign.”

While some people might find working with their mother uncomfortable – we love them but don’t want to work with them! – for Keira, it wasn’t a problem, “I think that probably all three of us [Keira, Sienna and Matthew] feel an incredible pressure on every single film. You always want to do the best you can possibly do and because mum wrote it, it wasn’t any more or less than normal. I’m very, very proud of this film. It’s very close to me but I didn’t feel a particular pressure because she’s my mum. I mean, in a funny kind of way, I’ve grown up with her writing and so I understand it and it seemed very naturally.”

But did life imitate art, as the saying goes, and did Keira and Sienna strike up a real friendship while on set? Well, if their behaviour on the red carpet in Edinburgh was to be believed, these two are firm friends, as they laughed and joked together in front of the world’s media. Following her much-publicised split from Welsh actor Rhys Ifans, it is reported that Sienna sought comfort in Keira, who has been a rock for her through what is always considered to be a difficult time in anyone’s life.

Emotions must have been heightened as Sienna is rumoured to have had an affair with co-star, and fellow Rhys, Welsh actor, Matthew Rhys. Based across the Pond, Matthew is apparently bemused by the press attention his and Sienna’s fling has attracted and maintains it had nothing to do with her and Rhys’s break-up. And while Rhys Ifan’s looks heartbroken, Sienna appeared glowing and enjoying the company of the ‘other’ Rhys.

While Sienna remained quiet in the presence of the press, she laughed and joked with Matthew as they waited to get their picture taken. But, a film set is not a film set if there isn’t a little bit of drama and the odd love-triangle. Set in the remote
Welsh countryside, the gang of four had plenty of time to get to know each other and was perhaps the perfect place for love to blossom. Do you not remember what happened between Brangelina on the set of Mr. & Mrs. Smith?

But romantic flings aside, The Edge of Love marks a pointed improvement for Sienna Miller. And while this film does seem to belong to Keira, through her mother’s key role in writing it and Keira’s own role in getting it made, it is Sienna’s performance that has made it into a must-see piece of cinematic history. And if rumours are to be believed, and her fling with Matthew put an end to her relationship with Rhys, let’s just hope she made the right decision because at the rate she’s going, it won’t be long until she’s run out of Welshmen altogther!

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