Keira Knightley: "Beautiful and Damned"

Keira Knightly is definitely becoming the go-to girl for period movies, isn’t she? In the past few years, she’s done: The Duchess, Atonement, Pride & Prejudice, Silk, and King Arthur, to name a few.

Heck, even the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise can be classified as period movies, and she has King Lear coming up, scheduled for a 2010 release date. Knightley just has that “look” about her — as if she really did emerge from a different era. And that doesn’t always mean wispy either — she can be fierce!

Now she’s signed to play the tempestuous Zelda in The Beautiful and the Damned. Directed by Nick Cassavetes from a screenplay by Hanna Weg,  it’s a love story about F. Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda Sayre.

The two became the living-large icons of the Jazz Age. Although they were toasts of the town in the 1920s, their love story and marriage was beset with jealousy and acrimony. Both used the relationship for novel material and artistic endeavors, and Zelda ended up in a sanitarium. I look forward to seeing Knightley bring her to life.

Image: The Duchess, Paramount Vantage, 2008