Keira Knightley Will Star in THE ESSEX SERPENT

Deadline reports that Keira Knightley will star in an adaptation of "The Essex Serpent" on Apple TV+. The actress also serves as executive producer on the project.

Clio Barnard directs, with a script by Anna Symon.

Knightley plays the newly widowed Cora, who, having being released from an abusive marriage, relocates from Victorian London to the small village of Aldwinter in Essex, intrigued by a local superstition that a mythical creature known as the Essex Serpent has returned to the area.

Keira Knightly made her West End theatrical debut in Martin Crimp's translation of Molière's comedy The Misanthrope, staged by Thea Sharrock at the Comedy Theatre in London, in December 2009. She received an Olivier Award nomination as well as an Evening Standard Award nomination for the Natasha Richardson Award. In January 2011, Knightley returned to the Comedy Theatre and starred in Lillian Hellman's The Children's Hour, staged by Ian Rickson.

Previously, Knightley starred in Joe Wright's adaptation of the Jane Austen novel Pride & Prejudice. She earned Academy Award and Golden Globe Award nominations for her portrayal of Elizabeth Bennet. Two years later, she was a Golden Globe and BAFTA Award nominee for her performance as Cecilia Tallis in Atonement. Additionally, she starred in Wright's Anna Karenina, based on the novel by Leo Tolstoy and adapted by Academy Award winner Tom Stoppard.

Knightley's breakout movie role was in Gurinder Chadha's Bend It Like Beckham, for which she won the London Critics' Circle Film Awards' British Newcomer of the Year prize. Audiences worldwide took notice of Knightley as the heroine Elizabeth Swann in Gore Verbinski's, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, starring opposite Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom and Geoffrey Rush.

She landed her first feature film role at the age of 10, in Patrick Dewolf's Innocent Lies. Knightley then starred in Nick Hamm's The Hole, with Thora Birch, and Gillies MacKinnon's Pure; and appeared alongside Natalie Portman in George Lucas' Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace.

Read the original story on Deadline.

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