Keira Knightley kicked off her career in the giant Pirates of the Caribbean movies before moving on to more highbrow fare, but she's going to be getting back to action soon, taking the female lead role in Jack Ryan. She'll star opposite Chris Pine as the title character in the reboot of the franchise that brought us Hunt for Red October, Patriot Games and Clear and Present Danger back in the day.
Knightley will be playing Ryan's wife, who becomes endangered after Ryan discovers a terrorist plot to collapse the United States economy. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Knightley was the first actress the studio approached for the part, and they had auditioned the likes of Evangeline Lilly and Felicity Jones before returning to Knightley. She's the first person besides Pine to be confirmed in the cast, though Kevin Costner was recently rumored for a "co-lead" role as a CIA agent somehow responsible for Ryan's work.
Actually, that's not quite true-- Kenneth Branagh, who is directing the film, is also playing the villain, though that's such a strange turn of events that we're still having a hard time believing it. The film, which was all set to go over a year ago before getting delayed in favor of Star Trek 2, is finally going into production next month, a prequel to the earlier films that starred Alec Baldwin, Harrison Ford and Ben Affleck as the hero.
