Keira Knightley, an actress emerges.

Not matter how hard I try to talk my good friends Dean and Lee to watching Keira Knightley in Pride and Prejudice, they will not. Lee is far more open to it, but Dean rants and raves about having to watch anything with ‘Skeletor’, as he calls her, in it. True she has had a less than stellar back catalogue, but I feel this is mostly due to her rocketing to fame so young. When you are part of young Hollywood, making a name is one of the hardest things to do by just being an excellent actor in well regarded films, although there are plenty of exceptions (Sarah Polley, Ryan Gosling and Joseph Gordon-Levitt to name a few), but the rise is slow).
Most of the time you have to do a lot of fluff before you are independent enough to start making your own choices based on artistic merits rather than paycheck. Every actor has their Pirate of Caribbean and Domino on their resume, who are we to judge, lord knows some of the jobs I did for money were soulless.
Keira blew me away in Pride and Prejudice, and if this trailer for Atonement is anything to go by, then I will be blown away again, and be cheering her name come Oscar time like I did before.

Thank you to Nathaniel at The Film Experience for the heads up on the trailer. If you haven’t yet taken a look, he has his Early Bird Oscar Predictions up!!!!