At the tail end of May, we reported that Kiera Knightley was being lined up to play Princess Diana in a movie biopic of the Princess’ life. The news story came from The Sun so I did post it with a grain of salt but there might have been some truth to it and whoever wrote the original article may have got their wires crossed slightly, and weren’t totally making things up.

You see, Variety are reporting today that Knightley is to star in The Duchess, a movie about an 18th century aristocrat who was the Duchess of Devonshire and actually a descendant of Princess Diana. Apparently she lived a extravagant and luxurious lifestyle, had many lovers and was a gambler but actually a successful powerbrooker also. She was constantly ridiculed by the British press and is now known by historians as the “Princess Diana” of her time.

The movie is set to shoot in October and is actually an adaptation of a best selling novel from Amanda Foreman.

So Knightley will play The Duchess in a movie after all, just not quite what we were expecting. The movie will no doubt be compared to Diana upon it’s eventual release but nevertheless this sounds like a great opportunity for Knightley to show off her acting abilities in a character based drama. Personally I don’t just think it’s just about the looks with her and when she gets cast right she can do a hell of a job with the material she is given.

This sounds like it could be one of those projects and it wouldn’t surprise me if her Pride and Prejudice and Atonement director Joe Wright is tapped to up to helm, capping off their trilogy of period drama’s.