Keira e "My fair lady"

Keira Knightly is sharpening her vowels, having just received the latest draft of Emma Thompson’s-script for the new version of the musical My Fair Lady.
Various studio executives connected to the re-make of the classic film, which starred Audrey Hepburn and Rex Harrison, have said that Keira, Anne Hathaway and Scarlett Johansson are the main possibilities to play Eliza Doolittle.
However, Cameron Mackintosh, one of the film’s main producers with Duncan Kenworthy, let it be known that there are two contenders and they happen to be Keira — and Scarlett.
My spies at Sony studios in Los Angeles suggest someone should be singing a Henry Higgins-ish ‘She’s got it!’ to Miss Knightley.
I’m told she’s the most natural Eliza people have seen.
She has worked on her singing voice for a year and will get better and better.
She has also met director Danny Boyle and he likes her — but there are an army of other people who will also make the decision, from the studio chiefs at Sony, to the two main producers and various consultants Sony have hired. It will take a long time for such a collective to come to a joint decision.
Keira’s scared of taking such a landmark role, but she would be in her element once she got in front of the camera.
‘Being scared is part of the deal — it makes you dig deeper,’ one studio executive noted.
Anyway, filming is a long way off and other casting has to be done — who, for instance, will play Eliza’s mentor Higgins?
Then there will be extensive rehearsals, the soundtrack will be laid down before filming and about a thousand other things will have to be organised. Filming will, most likely, begin late next year.
Emma’s still tinkering with the script and shaping her dialogue around those classic songs.
Keira, who gained an Oscar nomination for Pride And Prejudice and best actress consideration from Bafta for Atonement, has recently finished working on London Boulevard opposite Colin Farrell and she’s in talks about future dramatic projects.
Keira’s partner, the actor Rupert Friend, as this column noted last week, will make his stage debut opposite Tamsin Greig in The Little Dog Laughed with performances starting at the Garrick in early January.
Whatever she does choose to do, she wants it to be in London so she can be on hand to support Rupert.
However, she will travel to New York early in the New Year to support London Boulevard and the drama Never Let Me Go, adapted from Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel, in which she stars alongside Charlotte Rampling.

Keira Knightley will not play Eliza Doolittle in the new movie version of My Fair Lady.
The Oscar-nominated actress, currently energising the London theatre scene with her stage debut in The Misanthrope at the Comedy Theatre, has withdrawn herself from consideration for the role created by Audrey Hepburn in the landmark film based on the Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe musical.
Over a period of two years, the 24-year-old star met producers Cameron Mackintosh and Duncan Kenworthy to discuss the possibility of playing the Covent Garden flower girl who becomes a Maycould fair lady after she meets Professor Henry Higgins.

Although strongly linked with the role (she had singing lessons and sang for Mackintosh), Keira was never officially offered the part. She is believed to have felt that the project was taking too long to get off the ground.