herself as one of the most saw after leading ladies. you can catch her in the new film "anna karenina," also starring jude law. a conversation with keira knightley coming up right now. >> there is a saying that dr. king had that said there is always the right time to do the right thing. i try to live my life every day by doing the right thing. we know that we are only halfway to completely eliminating hunger and we have work to do. walmart committed $2 billion to fighting hunger in the u.s. as we work together, we can stamp hunger out. >> and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you.

tavis: please welcome keira knightley to this program. this friday you can catcher in the film adaptation of the classic "anna karenina." hear a sampling of her other work. >> had not your pride heard by my honesty and your scruples. do expect to rejoice in the inferiority of your circumstances? >> and those are the words of a gentleman? your arrogance and his seat, your disdain for the feelings of others made me realize i was -- you were the last man in the world i could be prevailed upon to marry. >> do you know what i am talking about? you knew before i did. >> where are you crying?

>> don't you know? >> freedom and moderation. >> precisely. >> surely you are full the best intentions. i would not spend my vote on so vague a statement. one is either free or what is not. the freedom concept is an absolute. one cannot be moderately dad or moderately loved or moderately free. it must be a matter of the either-or. >> i do not waste my time on the wrong person. i will not waste my parents time introducing them to some future stranger. and this ridiculous questions. it is liberating, that is what it is. >> maybe you have not met

the right guy. >> by the sweat of our brows and the strength of our backs and the courage of our hearts. gentlemen. >> you whispered to me during that clip, so many period pieces. is that a surprise to you? you did the work. >> i was there. tavis: is that a good thing? i like that. >> i like that. you know. yeah, no, it's great. i read scripts, and i think that is an interesting story or that is an interesting character and you see the movie and you think that is a lot of dresses. tavis: and a lot of hair. we will get back to that in a moment. but first, "anna karenina," also

starring jude law. >> love was never a game to us. there is an indiend to for livig in corners. now we can be together. >> can we? do you think my husband will make you a present of me? >> leave him. run away. >> i would never see my son again. the laws are made by husbands and fathers. >> what man? i will never forgive myself for your unhappiness. >> of happiness? starving beggar who has been given food. i unhappy. no. this is my happiness. tavis: aha, another period pi

ece. let us explore this, shall we? you look at the script and you say, interesting role, i want to do this but there must be something here that draws you. >> to back then. it is the element of fantasy. i think it is the fact you can leave everything you know behind you. you leave yourself, your society, your country and you just connect on a total emotional level and i find that really interesting. it is a world that is rolled -- whose rules you do not know prieta, can always be created and freed. i find it an interesting way to draw people in. tavis: i will take that. >> ok. tavis: i read this in my

research, when you read the script it went back to read a tolstoy novel. >> i read the book when i was 19 for the first time. som tavis: i will ask you. >> you want to know if i saw it differently. and remembered it as being obviously sweepingly dramatic and tragic. i remembered her as being the innocent. as being the wrong party. as being everyone else was in the wrong and she was in the right and i read it began last summer and went, this is not what i remember and she is not what i remember. the function of the character with and the piece is not to be

the absolute heroin. i think that there is a moral ambiguity. you should condemn her at certain points. i was kind of really interested in looking at that. tavis: does she fit squarely in now that you have read this a couple of times now, you have played the part, that she fit squarely in the heroine category or the anti-heroine category? >> i do not think that tolstoy was holding her up saying you should do this. he is holding her for a certain amount of moral combination. she is very manipulative. she is deceitful. she is greedy. she is also wonderful and loving and full of laughter and full of life and amazing. you cannot ignore the sides to her personality which is why she's been so fascinating for hundreds of years.

tavis: is that the reason why you wanted to play the character? you'll get your scripts and you say that is something that is fascinating to play. what made you want to play this character? >> i said yesterday before. because of my memory of the book. even the art -- even though i remembered her as being more simple. i still went that is a great book. how did you turn down playing anna? tavis: accept -- you accepted the part based on your initial reading. your read the text and saw this, she was a complex character. were you more excited to play it or did you say, what have i done? >> a bit of both. it was this is going to be much more difficult than i thought it was going to be. and trying to walk that tightrope. it is a tight rope of going, you

cannot play a character that is this lead character that an audience detests because they will not care what happened stir and it is important they carry but we do not want to simplify her. it was -- i did say this is not as easy as i thought. tavis: i am not an actor and that is a good thing. i would not want to damn the pressure. -- the profession. there is a degree of difficulty in playing characters in these period pieces. if you are canterbury, you want to be believable. every actor wants to be believable but it is easier for me to connect if you are in an era that i am a familiar with and i understand. i would think there is a degree of difficulty in applying those but i could be wrong. >> it depends. yes, your right and sometimes a lot of actors would say the most

difficult thing to say is to play something close to yourself which american actors are generally better at than english actors and i do not know why that is. it takes a real leap of imagination to do with a period piece because everything is stylized about it and nothing is what you know and you have to learn the whole thing and turn it into that second skin. there is always the kind of imaginative lead that is required that you can kind of get away with not thinking about things when you are doing a contemporary piece because you know the world around me. i know all this. things like dialogue is often stylized in period pieces and that adds an extra level, trying to make that stylized dialogue not sound too hokey. that is an interesting part of the whole experience. tavis: this is your first time here, hopefully not your last.

you know not what to do which is to say something that begs me to go back and interrogate you. >> oh, no, my first mistake. the mistake you made was suggesting, making this comparison between british and american actors when it comes to play certain characters. at least speculate what that difference exists. >> america out wonderfully celebrates the individual. i think you are good at saying i, i like this. tavis: that is very nicely put. we're arrogant. >> look, i am english, you cannot get more arrogant than that. come on. english, you apologize about yourself. we have all level of apology -- a level apology. sorry, sorry. there is a general kind of don't

stick your head up to high. it is much easier for english actors to go, i do not want to play me because i should not be here. i will put that person. there is something culturally within that. i also think you come from a history of film. this is the place of film actors. some actors -- normally it is closer to themselves because you are working in closeups. it is easier prey we come from a theatrical tradition where the character is put on top of us because it is a bigger, broader kind of thing. there are several things that lead to it. tavis: let me ask one of those arrogant, pompous, american questions. >> that is your word, not mine. i was celebrating it. tavis: i will take responsibility. when you were a kid growing up in the u.k. and you latch on to

this acting profession, how much did you dream, one, a desire to make it in theater, in film in america? to your point as we're so steeped in film. were you content? if your career had stayed across the water or is this part of a dream for you? >> my aim was to work in london theater. it did not really go further than that. partly because my parents, my dad is a stage actor and my mother is a playwright and that is what i have grown up with, that is what i have known. i did not imagine that would be american films. it was something beyond i absolutely did not -- when it happened and when i started getting these films, it was a complete shock. it had not been beyond what i had imagined. tavis: there's a great line in the film "broadcast news."

what happens in life when your life exceed your dreams? i raised that to ask, your goal is to act initially. if you can get to the theater in london, you're happy. so all this worldwide fame happens. how do you navigate through that? how do you think you are mastering all the exposure and a photographers and the expectation and the celebrity and the oscar? how do you handle that? >> at the grand old age of 27 and i have been doing this for the last 10 years. i think i have gone into a group of being able to chill out about things and go, that was the finale --i could not handle it. it was not something i was aiming for. you always go would you like to

be rich and famous? because it had not been something, i am going to hollywood, i'm going to do this. it was a total shock and i absolutely was not prepared for any of it. there was a time of being very frightened by it. i am incredibly lucky, i have a very close family and a close group of friends and they literally just kind of protected me. that was wonderful. i think now i am incredibly lucky. i have amazing experiences. you learn to deal with the things that are presented to you. you are dealing with the positives and negatives and cling to the positives. tavis: i suspect any parent would be happy or least comfortable with the success you have had now at the ripe old age of 27 but given the close-knit family your referenced, were your parents encouraging of you to go in this direction or discouraging given they have

been in the business? >> they did not want me to act, no. i started acting when i was 6 and the reason is they found out i was dyslexic and i had wanted to act and i wanted to have an agent. my teacher said if you have a carrot, dingell it in front of her. she has to learn to read. i was only ever allowed to act during holidays and only of my grades went up. it was used as a kind of thing but they thought it would get it out of my system. she will hit within two years and this will be a phase and it will go away. it did not. i think there are very sweet. they're very proud and very encouraging and the rest of it. if they had their way, i would be a lawyer. definitely. still. tavis: we see how well you have manage the career -- manage the career of this band.

how have you managed the dyslexia? >> i have had to go to auditions and the embarrassment of -- if they handed me a piece of paper and i could not read. if i had to read a teleprompter, i could not. it used to be i would have to get a script one week before an audition and i would really work on it. now it is much better. you have something in england which is being statemented. if you are deemed to be dyslexic you are given extra time and when i was 11 i was deemed to be fined. -- be fine. the words do jump around if i get tired, which is quite exciting. they could be anything. i am a slow reader but it is better now. tavis: this is the third time

that you in this wonderful director have connected. over the years i talked to a number of actors who, for whatever reason or reasons, find a level of comfort with a particular director who they go back to two or three or four times in their career. talk about this relationship and why it exists. >> i wish i could answer that. i am lucky. i love his imagination. i think we have similar tastes and we describe the emotions in a similar way. tavis: we should give him a name. mr. wright. that was my mistake, i am sorry. >> i love his work and we do describe the emotions the same way. it is really rare. people do describe the way they feel in different ways and we have always had a shorthand as far as that goes which helps on the film set. it was a massive level of trust. you kind of -- he is incredibly

respectful to the people he works with and he wants the best from everybody. you feel that you can try things, you feel they can go in any direction and he will bring you back or push you want. i am very lucky to have that relationship. tavis: as is he. i want to go back to this comment made earlier about this krepol age of 27 trade you have been at this but the longer you have been in the game it seems to me the more strategy one has to engage to figure out how to direct a career. when your 16, there is a strategy but you are trying to get this thing off the ground and make it work. once you get to 27, let me put this way. success is harder to manage than failure in some ways. at this point, how does one go about making choices for what

comes next in this career or is that we too much over thinking in terms of how you choose your part? >> there is not a strategy as far as i need to do this. i do not know what i'm doing next. there is a kind of -- i am very selfish about the way i choose my work. what i am interested in right now which is why i called a year in the vans. i have to go, where is my head at? what is it that i am doing? it is in this direction. if i am not completely -- the work is not that good i am completely fascinated by the subject. if you get that first moment where it is happening -- >> luck, that is my career. >> i happened to get them and

they all happened to be an amazing success and it is hard work. then you if you are given the opportunity and it is amazing if you are, it is about trying to get better, trying to improve and to interesting work. tavis: sometimes success can be harder to manage. >> that is when you kind of have to know [inaudible] somewhere. tavis: "bend it like bec kham"was the project for you. >> that was all in one year and then got "pirates of the caribbean"after. that was a successful thing that happened in the first time -- one of the reasons i got

"pirates of the caribbean" is because of "bend it like beckham." i felt stupid for feeling -- leaving school at 16. i tried to prove i was not stupid so the russian ones came up, "anna karenina," and "dr. wasago,' and they ruled i not stupid. tavis: you are far from that. i asked you earlier about how you think you are managing the success that is coming at you so fast and furious. there is in case you have not heard, some oscar buzz in this town around this project. i'm always interested on how people process that. do you shut it out, do you allow

yourself to sort revel in it? what is your method? >> i do not think you allowew yourself to revel in it. it was such a massive labor of love and even if it does not get any nomination, the fact that there is buzzing around it means you have done a good job. people are proceeding your work. given particularly with this project the theatrical conceit behind it, none of us knew if we were going to pull it off and if it really was frightening -- there really was frightening. the fact that it has come to this point and people are buzzy about it is fabulous. if we got some that would be even better. tavis: thank you for coming on. enjoyed this immensely. you're welcome back any time. stay away from trans.

>> i will. tavis: inside joke. if you have read the book you will pick up on it. we will see you next time on pbs. good night from l.a. and thanks for watching and as always, keep the faith. >> can i be of service to you? >> why are newly moscow? -- leaving moscow? >> what else can i do? i have to be where you are. >> stop, go back. this is wrong. >> it makes no difference. >> you have no right. >> it makes no difference. >> you must forgive me. if you are a good man, you will forget everything.

>> for more information on today's show, visit tavis smiley at pbs.org. tavis: hi, i'm tavis smiley. join me next time for a conversation with sally field on her role in "lincoln. that is next time. we will see you then. >> there is a saying that dr. king had that said there is always the right time to do the right thing. i try to live my life every day by doing the right thing. we know that we are only halfway to completely eliminating hunger and we have work to do. walmart committed $2 billion to fighting hunger in the u.s. as we work together, we can stamp hunger out. >> and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you.

>> be more. pbs.

captioning sponsored by macneil/lehrer productions >> brown: israel stepped up its military offensive in gaza today