Academy Award nominee Keira Knightley has been set to star opposite Cannes Film Festival winner Christoph Waltz in The Talking Cure, a new film about Austrian psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, according to the website moviepilot.de.
Waltz, 53, has received numerous accolades in the United States for his performance as a vicious, multi-lingual Nazi in Inglourious Basterds (right), Quentin Tarantino's World War II drama that is a likely Oscar contender. The actor will be playing Freud himself, widely respected by some as the father of modern psychoanalysis, widely denigrated by others as a pseudo-scientist.
Knightley, the female lead in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise and the star of Pride & Prejudice, will play one of Freud's patients. With David Cronenberg (A History of Violence) at the helm, The Talking Cure is based on the play of the same name by playwright and screenwriter Christopher Hampton, among whose credits are Dangerous Liaisons, Total Eclipse, and Atonement.
In 1962, Montgomery Clift starred as Freud in a film directed by John Huston from a screenplay by Charles Kaufman (not to be confused with the Charlie Kaufman of Being John Malkovich). Susannah York co-starred as one of Freud's patients. Jean-Paul Sartre initially contributed to the screenplay.
Photo: François Duhamel / The Weinstein Co.
Michael Fassbender is really an extraordinary actor. Sorry I did mention him.
What an incredible project! Knightley and Waltz are very good actors and with Cronenberg as director, this sounds like it could be a fantastic film. You didn't mention that Michael Fassbender is also going to be in the movie, another good actor.