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" There&amp;#039;s a reason Leo Tolstoy&amp;#039;s 1877 novel has been made into a movie so many times. Yes, of course it&amp;#039;s classic, but Joe Wright&amp;#039;s 2012 Anna Karenina (out in theaters this weekend), starring Keira Knightley and Jude Law, is the kind of twist you&amp;#039;d expect from Baz Luhrmann or Danny Boyle. Wright, who previously directed Knightley in Atonement and Pride &amp;amp;amp; Prejudice, reimagines the story as a highly stylized theater-set fever dream. Knightley plays the central doomed wife (she&amp;#039;s also recently engaged herself in real life, but that seems to be working out just fine). We talked to Knightley in New York City while she was promoting the movie about the role, romance more generally, the upcoming Jack Ryan, and her favorite depressing music. ESQUIRE.COM: What was it like playing Anna? She&amp;#039;s pretty complex, morally. KEIRA KNIGHTLEY: I initially read the book when I was in my late teens, early 20s, and my memory of it was of Anna being a victim and almost saintly. Then I read it again last summer. She was not the same person. I think the one to be idolized is Levin. Anna definitely walks the line of being the anti-heroine. ESQ: Why do you think the story still resonates?  KK: Because it&amp;#039;s about love and not just romance or just that happy bit, not love in the way it&amp;#039;s all sold to us, but love as the thing that we&amp;#039;ve been fascinated and obsessed by for centuries. Love can be madness and joy and happiness. It looks at the whole thing. It has more questions than it has answers.  ESQ: Do you relate to Anna at all?  KK: I find her terrifying because I am no better than she is. I find her terrifying because even in the moments when I judged her the harshest I thought, Would I do any differently? Have I behaved any better? Do I know that I would behave any better? No. ESQ: And in your own love life? Are you a romantic or a realist?  KK: I&amp;#039;m a twenty-seven-year-old woman, so it would be a bit strange if I had the romantic notions about relationships that you have when you&amp;#039;re in your teens. I think that love is absolutely inexplicable. It would be a bit shit of me to stand and go, &amp;quot;Yeah, love conquers all. It&amp;#039;s romance all the time.&amp;quot; You&amp;#039;d obviously go, &amp;quot;Bollocks!&amp;quot; So no, I think it&amp;#039;s a fascination. It&amp;#039;s the questions that we can never answer. Why do we feel the way we do? Why are we attracted to those people? Why even when it&amp;#039;s going badly do we go back for more?  ESQ: What&amp;#039;s your relationship to Joe Wright been like over the three films? KK: There is an amazing amount of trust, even when we have our bickering moments. We are quite like siblings. But there is never a question that I love him to pieces. That&amp;#039;s why \u2014 he said, only twelve weeks before we were going to start shooting, &amp;quot;By the way, I&amp;#039;ve completely changed the concept.&amp;quot; With a lot of directors, my alarm bells would have been going off. This one, we were like, &amp;quot;Wicked. Let&amp;#039;s jump.&amp;quot; It&amp;#039;s a ballsy move.  ESQ: Joe likes to play music on his sets. You&amp;#039;re a Leonard Cohen fan. What was playing during shooting? KK: Joe was taking a break and dancing! I was putting my own music in, normally something incredibly depressing, as he was listening to house music and dancing over in the corner.  ESQ: What were you listening to?  KK: Elgar \u2014 a lot of Elgar cello concertos, anything to make you cry, a bit of Rachmaninoff, if she was going really mad. Always helps.  ESQ: Are you relaxing over the holidays?  KK: I&amp;#039;ve been working solidly since May. I finish in December, but I can&amp;#039;t imagine finishing yet. So I don&amp;#039;t know.  ESQ: You&amp;#039;re working on Jack Ryan. That must be a different experience. KK: I got to the end of Anna Karenina and realized that I&amp;#039;d done five years of films where either I died or something horrific had happened. I wanted to spend a year not dying and trying to do things that were very positive. The first one that I made is a film called Can a Song Save Your Life?. Jack Ryan is a piece of absolute pure entertainment.  PLUS: Stephen Marche on Anna Karenina "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/interviews/a16770/keira-knightley-interview-14742233/?src=rss>