凱拉·奈特利：成名得太早，人生再起步

凱拉·奈特利的成功不具有復(fù)制性。她的起點(diǎn)很高，就是跑龍?zhí)椎慕巧彩谴髱熂?jí)人物操刀的巨制。在人生二十歲，她就完成了別人夢(mèng)寐以求的“鯉魚(yú)躍龍門(mén)”。從賺得盆滿缽滿的商業(yè)大片到贏盡口碑的文藝小清新，她選片眼光獨(dú)到，堪稱(chēng)“零失誤”。

但是，接下來(lái)的十年，她開(kāi)始面對(duì)陌生的東西——批評(píng)。在《贖罪》里，演技高手暗暗較勁，除了她，所有人都給予了自己人生中驚艷的表演，就連僅僅出場(chǎng)十幾分鐘的瓦妮莎·雷德格瑞夫都輕易蓋過(guò)了奈特利的風(fēng)頭；《危險(xiǎn)方法》，兩大男主角強(qiáng)悍，“不瘋魔不為人”的演繹讓奈特利的嘶吼顯得那么蒼白與虛假，影評(píng)人甚至刻毒地說(shuō)：“奈特利的做作讓觀眾希望她趕緊離開(kāi)畫(huà)面。”《安娜·卡列尼娜》里，奈特利意欲通過(guò)熟悉的古裝題材提醒人們她當(dāng)年名揚(yáng)奧斯卡的風(fēng)采，但是讓大家陶醉的不過(guò)是華麗的服飾和恢弘的歷史背景，僅此而已。

奈特利怎么了？她的演技一再受到質(zhì)疑，人們好像從“奈特利效應(yīng)”中恍然醒悟：原來(lái)奈特利根本不會(huì)演戲，她只是比較走運(yùn)而已。用中國(guó)人最樸素的哲學(xué)來(lái)解釋就是：運(yùn)氣皆有定，是會(huì)用完的。曾經(jīng)的嘖嘖稱(chēng)奇，不過(guò)是一片浮云罷了。成名太早，或者說(shuō)在肩膀沒(méi)有成熟到足以撐起巨大的名利時(shí)，這些所謂的贊美只不過(guò)是色彩斑斕的致幻劑。

What a 1）hectic and 2）heady career Knightley has had. She has been praised and razed， built up and torn down； variously hailed as the most vibrant British actor of her generation and dismissed as an 3）am-dram fake who got lucky. Hers is an apprenticeship that was played out on camera. It has bounced her from homegrown heartwarmers to Hollywood blockbusters to 4）costume dramas and back again， to the point where she can’t quite recall the work she has done or the people she knows.

In the past few years we have seen her as a hysterical psychiatric patient in A Dangerous Method and a doomed， tragic aristocrat in Anna Karenina. Today， however， Knightley has brought her long limbs and regal jawline into town to discuss a sunnier guise in a musical of sorts. The film is called Begin Again and that title is so 5）freighted with 6）corny significance that she keeps nodding at the poster， as though it is there as her 7）prompt. She explains that she had arrived at a crossroads， or maybe the end of act one. She was feeling 8）stuck in a rut， mired in neurotic roles， and longed to break herself free. Knightley rolls her eyes and dissolves with 9）mirth. “It’s like beginning，” she 10）hoots. “But it’s beginning again.”

Actually， I’m all for Knightley expanding her 11）repertoire； I just wish she had found herself a sharper playlist. In Begin Again， she stars as Greta， a heartbroken folk singer adrift in New York who helps a rumpled， down-on-hisluck record producer （Mark Ruffalo） up the road to redemption. The film is written and directed by John Carney and it plays like a moneyed， remastered version of his 2007 breakthrough Once. Begin Again lacks jeopardy； it lacks grit. For all their flirty 12）banter and 13）boisterous recording sessions， the characters in Once were barely 14）clinging on by their fingernails. Here， by contrast， they are largely 15）mooching and 16）wallowing， spinning mountains from molehills as the plot 17）shunts them between a series of 18）picturesque Manhattan backdrops.

Perhaps we should recap the recent decades—for her own benefit as much as anyone’s. She was raised in suburban west London， the daughter of dramatists， and famously requested an agent before she turned four. In her teens she took a small role in The Phantom Menace， starred in Bend It Like Beckham and picked up an Oscar nomination for her performance as Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice. She has acted alongside Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean，suffered soulfully through Atonement and 19）flogged haircare products and Chanel perfume. But her runaway acclaim made her tabloid 20）catnip as well. She was forced to deny rumours that she suffered from an eating disorder and found herself stalked like a frightened 21）gazelle whenever she set out on foot. “I like walking，” she says 22）ruefully. “I know that sounds like a stupid thing. But I do like walking， and for a long time I couldn’t.”

She probably remembers more than she cares to admit. Success， she allows， arrived a little too soon. “I’ve definitely done all my learning publicly. And I’ve had to develop a thick skin because of that. So yeah， there would have been a comfortable way of doing it where I went to drama school and made tons of mistakes. If you could choose how success happens， that’s what I would have chosen. But of course you can’t. And if a moment comes， you have to jump，because it probably won’t come around again. So I chose to jump， knowing it was going to be brutal because I knew that I hadn’t learned enough. I didn’t know what I was meant to be doing.”

The way Knightley tells it， her equivalent of drama school was the set of Hollywood blockbusters and high-end costume sagas. She was 23）feted and 24）fawned over； she treated an Olympic ski jump as her 25）nursery slope. Maybe this accounts for the 26）flickering hostility that she seems to inspire. Few rising actors divide an audience to the extent that Knightley does. Where fans applaud the open， unguarded quality of her screen performances， others see an unformed ingenue playing dress-up in the mirror.

“The criticism was tough，” she says. “At school I’d always been good at things. And drama was always something I’d been good at. I was picked for good parts in the school plays and you form a sense of yourself from that. And then all of a sudden people are saying： ‘No， you’re shit. You don’t know what you’re doing.’ It’s a strange27）jolt in how you see yourself and how you connect to the thing that you love.”

In her mid-20s， around the time most actors are just getting started， she made a conscious decision to 28）edge back from the limelight； to take on smaller productions and find a place she felt comfortable. But she still seems unsure just how far she should go. Her heart tells her one thing and her head says another. “The majority of my work is still in the commercial field. It hasn’t gone hugely experimental， which I would really like to do.”

If there are other films she would like to be in， I don’t know what’s stopping her. Her presence alone may be enough to finance an ambitious， 29）leftfield little movie. Knightley pulls a face； the prospect seems to alarm her.“Yeah， it can do， but then your box office comes back into it，” she explains. “You’re only useful in financing those films if you’ve got a big success behind you， and they have a certain 30）shelf life. So your stake in financing those films goes down very quickly. That’s why you have to tread a careful line. That’s the game we’re all playing.”

I have the sense this is an issue that is probably best left to another day， another year. Who cares if Knightley does not quite know where she wants to go next？ She has， after all， some time on her side. She is just catching up with herself.

凱拉·奈特利的演藝生涯可謂忙碌不已，而又爭(zhēng)議不斷。她受到過(guò)贊美與奚落，經(jīng)歷過(guò)人生巔峰與低谷。在許多人眼中，她是英國(guó)同時(shí)代女星中的佼佼者，同時(shí)又被視為沒(méi)有真材實(shí)料的“花架子”，走紅全因運(yùn)氣眷顧。……