Keira Knightley: Love Actually cue card scene was ‘quite creepy’

Andrew Lincoln’s character turns up at the home of newlywed Juliet (Knightley), and declares his love. Photo / Film Stills

• Keira Knightley described her Love Actually cue card scene as “creepy” and noted she was 17.
• Richard Curtis now finds the scene “a bit weird”, but didn’t at the time.
• Knightley stars in Netflix’s Black Doves as a Tory politician’s wife and secret assassin.

Keira Knightley has described her Love Actually cue card scene as “creepy”, pointing out that she was 17 years old at the time.

Richard Curtis’ 2003 film includes a scene in which Andrew Lincoln’s character turns up at the home of Juliet, a newlywed played by Knightley. Despite being the best friend of Juliet’s husband, he holds up a series of cards declaring his love for her.

“The slightly stalkerish aspect of it – I do remember that,” Knightley told the Los Angeles Times.

“My memory is of Richard, who is now a very dear friend, of me doing the scene, and him going, ‘No, you’re looking at [Lincoln] like he’s creepy’. And I’m like, ‘But it IS quite creepy’. And then having to redo it to fix my face to make him seem not creepy.

“I mean, there was a creep factor at the time, right? Also, I knew I was 17. It only seems like a few years ago that everybody else realised I was 17.”

Lincoln previously said he raised the scene with Richard Curtis at the time and questioned whether his character might be perceived as a ‘creepy stalker’ Credit: Peter Mountain/Film Stills

Curtis has said he now finds the scene “a bit weird”, but didn’t at the time.

“I remember being taken by surprise about seven years ago. I was going to be interviewed by somebody and they said, ‘Of course, we’re mainly interested in the stalker scene’, and I said, ‘What scene is that?’ And then I was, like, educated in it,” he said last year.

“All I can say is that a lot of intelligent people were involved in the film at the time, and we didn’t think it was a stalker scene. But if it’s interesting or funny for different reasons [now] then, you know, God bless our progressive world.”

Lincoln previously said: “My big scene in the doorway felt so easy. I just had to hold cards and be in love with Keira Knightley.

“But I kept saying to Richard, ‘Are you sure I’m not going to come off as a creepy stalker?’”

Knightley, 39, is now starring in the Netflix spy thriller Black Doves, playing a Tory politician’s wife with a secret life as an assassin.

It includes a gun battle in which her character is heavily pregnant.

The actress said: “Having been a very angry, pregnant woman – twice – I was like, ‘This makes sense’. I like the idea that she’s pregnant with twins and is so uncomfortable.

“She had these very sad Tory wife loafers on. I loved the juxtaposition of that with shooting the gun.”