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30th May 2016

This film director didn’t mince his words about working with Keira Knightley

Safe to say these two won't be working together again

Ellen Tannam

This seems a bit harsh.

John Carney is an Irish film director behind films such as Once and the recent hit Sing Street.

It seems, though, that he’d rather forget about one of his other films, 2014’s Begin Again starring Mark Ruffalo and Keira Knightley.

In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Carney did not hold back in his criticism of the actress, stating he would “…never work with supermodels again”.

Knightley played a musician in the film, but Carney said her lack of ability hampered the film:

“I think the real problem was that Keira wasn’t a singer and wasn’t a guitar player and it’s very hard to make music seem real if it’s not with musicians. And I think the audience struggled a little bit with that in Begin Again. And as much as I tried to make it work, I think that she didn’t quite come out as a guitar-playing singer-songwriter. So I really wanted to work with musicians and actors that could play their instruments properly and sing and stuff like that.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=227m6uLCRtU

Carney was full of praise for Ruffalo, describing him as “fantastic”, and only had good things to say about Maroon 5 singer Adam Levine, who had a key role in the movie.

“Adam Levine is a joy to work with, and actually quite unpretentious and not a bit scared of exposing himself on camera and exploring who he is as an individual,” Carney said.

But he laid even further into Knightley’s performance, saying:

“Keira has an entourage that follows her everywhere so it’s very hard to get any real work done, and so I was very ready to come back to Ireland and make films that nobody cared about who was in it or any of that crap.”

The director’s criticism is not going down well.

https://twitter.com/jowrotethis/status/736944757570605056

https://twitter.com/kpfallon/status/737009771128184836