Joe Wright had never read Jane Austen’s novel before being offered the film. His only reference was the 1940s adaptation with La…

Joe Wright had never read Jane Austen’s novel before being offered the film. His only reference was the 1940s adaptation with Laurence Olivier. He was not a fan. When Working Title approached him, he went away and read it. “I was reading Charles Bukowski, ” he said. “Jane Austen was a kind of shock, really. I was shocked by how modern and how exciting and vital the book seemed.” Wright initially did not want to cast Keira Knightley, thinking she was too attractive for the role. When he finally met her in Toronto, where she was filming The Jacket, he changed his mind. “She is really a tomboy, has a lively mind and a great sense of humour, ” he said. Knightley later described the encounter on The Graham Norton Show: “He didn’t originally want me for Pride and Prejudice because I was too pretty. And then he met me and said, ‘Oh no, you’re fine.'” The Charlotte Lucas scene, now one of the most quoted lines from the film, was never in the original script. Wright credits Emma Thompson, who did uncredited script doctoring on the film, for writing it. During the famous foggy field proposal, Wright used a red flag off camera to guide Matthew Macfadyen through the scene. Macfadyen has very poor eyesight and could not see where to walk without it. Film: Pride and Prejudice (2005)