Keira Knightley to play Anna Karenina in new film

ENGLISH actress Keira Knightley is set to portray one of Russian fiction's most famous women as she stars in the title role in a new adaptation of Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina. Jude Law and Aaron Johnson take the parts of Anna's husband, Aleksei Karenin, and her lover, Count Vronksy, respectively.

Knightley has become accustomed to playing romantic leads in period dramas, taking on the roles of Elizabeth Bennet in Pride & Prejudice and Cecilia Tallis in Atonement. Her director in both of those films, Joe Wright, is also in charge of Anna Karenina.

The screenplay for this latest recreation of Tolstoy's classic has been written by the playwright Tom Stoppard, whose work on Shakespeare in Love won best script at the 1999 Oscars.

Knightley is by no means the first Hollywood starlet to tackle the role of the ill-fated Anna Karenina. Greta Garbo featured in a 1935 adaptation of the book, while more recently Sophie Marceau played the role alongside Sean Bean in 1997.

The timing of the project, which starts filming later this month, is believed to be linked to the surprise success of The Last Station, the 2010 Tolstoy biopic which led to Helen Mirren and Christopher Plummer being nominated for Oscars in 2010. ·