New Joe Wright Interview promoting The Soloist in The UK

UK's Telegraph has a new interview with Pride & Prejudice (2005) director Joe Wright as he promotes his latest film The Soloist, in theaters in the UK, September 25th. Here in the U.S. it was released in theaters, April 24th, and is now available on DVD and Blu-ray.


In his new interview, he talks about The Soloist, P&P movie was mention a lot as well as quotes from Keira Knightley and Tom Hollander (both have worked with Wright twice in his films, Keira on P&P/Atonement and Tom on P&P/The Soloist), and mentions of his former fiancee and P&P star Rosamund Pike.

Here's an excerpt of Joe Wright's new interview...

His 2005 Jane Austen adaptation Pride & Prejudice, starring Keira Knightley as Elizabeth Bennet, did what nobody imagined it could, and eclipsed the beloved BBC series in both style and emotional content.

A box-office hit, it won its director the Carl Foreman Award for the Most Promising Newcomer at that year’s Baftas, as well as four Oscar nominations, including Best Actress for Knightley. Seemingly undeterred by the pressures of his own success, Wright then went on to tackle the film adaptation of Ian McEwan’s Booker Prize shortlisted bestseller, Atonement. Starring Keira Knightley and James McAvoy, Atonement won last year’s Bafta for Best Film (as well as six Oscar nominations, including Best Film) and secured Wright’s place as Britain’s hottest young director.

This is a story that in retrospect amuses Wright, but it’s clear that it was a tough time. He is the first to admit that his rapid ascent came with intense stress. 'I felt huge pressure on me with Atonement,’ he concedes. To an outsider, the Joe Wright who grinned in the sunshine on the red carpet at the 2007 Venice Film Festival, his beautiful fiancée Rosamund Pike on his arm, was a man at the top of his game.

'Joe’s passion for what he does is infectious,’ Keira Knightley says. 'When you work with him you feel that you are in such safe hands that you can do anything.’ His cultivation of this atmosphere is partly conscious. 'On both Pride & Prejudice and Atonement, Joe arranged parties every weekend and, on Atonement, we all lived in a house together in the Shropshire countryside. It was like being a real family, a proper company of actors, and the affection and trust that we all felt for each other – and unanimously for Joe – was reflected in the quality of our work.’

The drawback of this family atmosphere is the sense of isolation that kicks in when filming has ended. 'At the end of each film it feels like the circus has left the village,’ says Tom Hollander, whom Wright cast in both Pride & Prejudice and The Soloist. 'Joe – who gives himself totally for the two years a film takes to create – feels that loneliness and sadness more than anyone.’

Last autumn, only weeks before it was due to take place, Wright called off his wedding to Rosamund Pike, his girlfriend of four years whom he had fallen in love with on the set of Pride & Prejudice. Out of 'respect’ for her, he will not be drawn on the subject, but a mystery remains over why the woman of whom he once said 'I feel I can do anything with her, go anywhere, do anything’ was cut out of his life.

For Joe Wright the story has barely begun. Yet he feels full of trepidation about where – or when – it will end. 'For all we know, Darcy might beat Elizabeth two years on from where Pride & Prejudice leaves off,’ he deadpans, with a hint of amusement dancing around his eyes. 'The storyteller in me knows that the happy ending is just where you choose to end it.’

Read full article here.

'The Soloist’ is out in UK theaters on September 25!

Related Link:
UK's Telegraph does a Rosamund Pike interview