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30th May 2016

Irish director John Carney didn’t mince his words about working with Keira Knightley

This is really harsh

Ellen Tannam

This is 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.”

He was full of praise for Ruffalo describing him as ‘fantastic’, but laid even further into Knightley’s performance:

“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.”

Some very strong words from the Irish director.

Knightley has been nominated for an Academy Award twice: