Keira Knightley reveals she had a 'creepy' encounter with 'Love Actually' fans: "I was stuck..."
Keira Knightley Keira Knightley revealed that ‘Love Actually’ still follows her, recalling a moment she called both “creepy and sweet. The 39-year-old actress is known for a famous scene in the 2003 holiday movie where Andrew Lincoln’s character stands outside her door, using large handwritten signs to confess his love for her. During an appearance on 'The Graham Norton Show', Knightley talked about how fans have recreated that moment in unexpected ways.
"I was stuck in traffic for ages recently and a car full of builders next to me started holding up the signs like in the movie,” she said. “It was creepy and sweet at the same time, much like it was in the film.” Knightley appeared on the show with Cher, Josh Brolin, and Michael Fassbender to discuss her role in Netflix’s upcoming spy thriller, ‘Black Doves’. Talking about her action scenes in the series, she explained, “Originally, lovely Ben (Whishaw), who is the assassin, was shooting loads of guns so I thought, ‘Great, I don’t have to do much other than look ‘spyee.’ “Then in the second draft, I am shooting guns but still that’s not too bad. Then suddenly I am doing knife fighting and Ju-Jitsu. So, we went from it being easy and lovely to a lot of fighting and a lot of training.”
Over the years, critics have re-examined ‘Love Actually,’ questioning whether it’s as romantic as it first seemed. The Independent’s Holly Williams argued that the film is not as “heartwarming” as people remember, particularly pointing out the scenes between Knightley’s character, Juliet, and Lincoln’s character, Mark. “Mark is scared, scared of how much he likes Juliet. And yet he doesn’t even know her,” Williams wrote. “Juliet says, ‘But you never talk to me... you don’t like me.’ Mark has put her on a pedestal entirely because of the way she looks, with no regard for her personality or intellect.
“Maybe if he’d bothered to chat with her, he would have realized they had irreconcilably different viewpoints about the war in Iraq or the new Radiohead album or whatever else people talked about in 2003, and could have moved on. “Instead, we get the most famous scene of the film, Mark turns up to declare his love via the medium of giant hand-written signs, because it’s Christmas and we tell the truth at Christmas. Do we? Isn’t it the time of little white ‘I love it, you shouldn’t have’ lies? And this, after all, his best mate’s wife he’s calling ‘perfect’. Keep it under your Santa hat, Mark.”
Chiwetel Ejiofor, who played Peter in ‘Love Actually,’ discussed his character’s controversial love triangle. According to Wall Street Journal, reflecting on the iconic scene where Andrew Lincoln's character professes love to Keira Knightley's Juliet, Ejiofor was glad that audiences are now seeing Peter’s perspective. He noted, "It's good to see the world has come around to Peter's point of view." Despite the debate, Knightley still finds herself in situations where fans recreate its most famous moment. Whether romantic or unsettling, it’s a scene that has stayed with audiences, and with her.
