Knightley: "Photos steal my soul"

BEIJING, Feb. 26 -- Rex Features Keira Knightley has revealed that she believes having her photo taken steals her soul.

The actress said she feels at home in front of a movie camera but hates being snapped in her free time.

She said: "I look in the mirror and go 'Oh no! More spots, more acne!' I'm not comfortable having to be myself or being photographed as myself.

"Australian Aboriginies say that with every photo that is taken, a piece of your soul goes with it. And there are some days when I kind of believe that."

She added that she would prefer to be out of the media spotlight, saying: "I could definitely say that if I could possibly be an actress with the career that I've got but be completely anonymous, I'd choose that."

(Source: China Daily/Agencies)

Top 10 Hollywood couples

1. Bogie and Bacall
He was dashing and debonair. She was feisty and independent. While there were more than twenty years difference between them, Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall made a connection on the set of "To Have and Have Not" that would last until his death in 1957. They made three more movies together, had two children and still remain a classic example of old Hollywood chic.

2. Tracy and Hepburn
Even though they couldn't publicly acknowledge their romance due to his Catholic marriage, Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy are one of Hollywood's all time great pairings. They were perhaps a tad mismatched and he was married, but that didn't stop the two legendary actors from cementing their mark in the annals of Hollywood coupledom. They teamed up in several memorable movies where they classically butted heads and wormed their way into each other's and our hearts.
3. Newman and Woodward
Paul Newman and Joanne Woodard met in the theatre and later embarked on a marriage that would last them fifty years and counting. They have three daughters and countless awards and movies between them, ten of which they starred in together. They're film legends, philanthropists and a seemingly normal couple who remain one of Hollywood's golden couples.

4. Russell and Hawn
Their collaborations onscreen may have fizzled, but Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn's off-screen chemistry has remained red-hot since 1984. Although they've never married, they remain one of Hollywood's most successful couples. Her bubbly, blonde personality and his cool, laid back manner complement each other nicely as evidenced by their over twenty year commitment to each other.

5. Hanks and Wilson
They met in the wacky comedy "Volunteers" and left their respective significant others to be together. Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson's union has lasted over twenty years, produced two kids and shows no signs of stopping. Never in the tabloids, always classy and often goofy, these two are a shining example of how couples should conduct themselves in Tinseltown.

6. Bacon and Sedgwick
They met on a forgettable TV movie called "Lemon Sky" and married months later. They've since collaborated on two children and five movies and remain one of Hollywood's most likeable couples. They live a low key life that is void of all the drama and paparazzi that follow many high profile couples today. They appear to be down to earth, happy and genuine and have the kind of relationship many people strive for.

7. Smith and Pinkett
They are beautiful and their chemistry is obvious. Will Smith and Jada Pickett are clearly two people who truly respect, enjoy and appreciate what they have in each other. They first met on the set of his TV show "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air," but she was less than impressed with him. He eventually won her over though and ten years and two kids later, they remain a happy celebrity twosome.

8. Robbins and Sarandon
Another couple that isn't legally hitched, Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon have been committed to each other since their first meeting on the set of "Bull Durham" in 1988. They have two children together and collaborated on "Dead Man Walking," which earned her an Academy Award. They are both supremely talented and devoted to social and political causes, as well as each other.

9. Beatty and Bening
No one thought it would happen. Warren Beatty, Hollywood's notorious bachelor ended his playboy ways for his "Bugsy" co-star, Annette Bening. Their relationship took Hollywood by surprise, but an even bigger shock was that their marriage lasted. Four children and sixteen years later, these respected actors are still going strong and appear to be as happy as ever.

10. Parker and Broderick
The chic style icon and the theatre nerd might make an unlikely union, but they certainly work. Married for over ten years, Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick are the proud parents of a son and the poster couple for New York City cool. Unassuming and seemingly normal, these two make having thriving careers and a great relationship seem effortless.

African designer's dream: putting 'umugwegwe' on the map

PARIS (AFP) — When young fashion designer Bill Ruterana was looking for inspiration and cheap material to make clothes in his native Rwanda, he found it sprouting under his feet.

"Umugwegwe", a plant something like flax or raffia, grows prolifically in Rwanda and when treated produces a frothy wool-like fibre.

Ruterana used it to spectacular effect in his latest collection unveiled this weekend at the second edition of Paris' "Labo Ethnik World Fashion Show" spotlighting African, Caribbean and multi-cultural design.

"Umugwegwe serves no real purpose but is a goldmine for me. It grows everywhere and it's very easy to work with," said the slight 24-year-old, who is such a fan that he used it not only for flamboyant multicoloured head-dresses but even for a show-stopping wedding gown.

He discovered that by pulverising the plant he could tease out fibres and colour them with vegetable dyes.

Born in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ruterana moved to Kigali in 1994 at the age of 10, just after the genocide that left 800,000 people dead, according to the UN.

"I saw bombs, mines, piles of corpses on the roads and in bushes, my friends with hands and feet chopped off," he says. The trauma if anything left him determined to succeed. A cartoonist and artist by training, he turned to fashion after painting dancers' bodies for a festival.

Paris Fashion Week: Balmain

Hilary Alexander reports from Paris Fashion Week:-

The somewhat sober mood and longer hemlines of Milan Fashion Week were swept away by punk glamour on the opening day of the Paris prêt-à-porter season yesterday.

	Punk glamour: hemlines dropped at Balmain

The young French designer Christophe Decarnin at Balmain produced a collection which was the exact reverse of over-the-knee skirts and restrained, autumnal tones.

With its micro-minis, Sex Pistols’ tartans, sock-it-to-me glitz, cave-woman leathers and crystal-embroidered animal prints, the show had all the subtlety of a kick in the teeth with a pair of Dr Martens and could not have been further from the ethos of the founder of the house, Pierre Balmain, who believed in ‘elegance from simplicity’.

Decarnin’s microscopic shift dresses glittered with red and black lightning flashes or shiny, beaded tiger-stripes and were accessorized with spike-heeled, black suede booties, with a fringe of leather around the ankle.

Body-hugging tube dresses, which covered just enough to avoid infringing laws of public decency, were emblazoned with crystal leopard-prints. A black leather scrap of a dress, with a ragged hemline that could have been chewed by a woolly mammoth, was encrusted with big cat spots in silver mesh.

source:-
telegraph.co.uk

Catwalk's in the bag for this breed

DON'T be fooled by their lithe figures. Over the past three weeks these Aussie models ate New York, swallowed London and chewed up Milan. And they are hungry for more, with Paris for dessert next week.

The 2008 fashion circuit will go down as the year Australian models reigned supreme, treading a catwalk worn down by the likes of the "veteran" expat clothes horse Gemma Ward, who after five years and at the tender age of 20 has all but retired from the runway world with about $10 million in the bank to concentrate on her Hollywood career.

In her wake are the Australians Abbey Lee Kershaw, Catherine McNeil, Jessica Gomes, Alice Burdeu, Tiah Eckhardt, Skye Stracke, Vanessa Milde , Miranda Kerr, Nicole Trunfio and Alexandra Agoston, who have become the toast of the notoriously fickle international modelling world, some being paid $60,000 for a single parade while others are taking home $500,000 pay cheques from some of the world's biggest fashion names.

"I think it has become easier for Australian models since Gemma's success … I guess the international market just takes more notice of the girls coming out of Australia now," says the boss of Chic Models, Kathy Ward, who has watched many flourish in the northern hemisphere in recent weeks.

While the likes of the lingerie babe Kerr epitomise the image of sun-kissed, voluptuous Aussie beauty made famous by Elle Macpherson two decades ago, it is on the runway that Australian models are being noticed. In the flesh they stand head and shoulders above "normal" girls, moving their freakishly long limbs with a distinct awkwardness.

But on the catwalk and under the intense spotlights of a fashion show they are the thoroughbreds of modelling.

McNeil was quickly booked for more than 30 shows at Milan and Paris fashion weeks, which makes her one of the hottest models in the world right now. Last year she worked exclusively for six months with the fashion photographer Mario Testino.

Kershaw, who like McNeil won the Girlfriend magazine cover girl title and a modelling contract with Chic Models in Sydney, had 29 runway shows in New York. On Thursday she scored a Gucci coup in Milan, being signed to walk exclusively for Gucci.

The Herald fashion writer Kellie Hush said she might not be earning the estimated $50,000-$60,000 McNeil is paid per show yet, but a deal taking a model off the runway for a Milan season could be worth $500,000.

The secret of how flat-chested Keira became a buxom pirate girl

She's famously flat-chested - but just as well known as a buxom pirate girl - and now Keira Knightley has revealed the secrets of her seemingly versatile cleavage.

Miss Knightley, who has described her naturally small breasts as 'pecs', has confessed that her busty transformation is all down to make-up.

The slightly built 22-year-old Atonement actress shot to worldwide fame in the blockbuster Pirates Of The Caribbean - with breasts spilling over the tight corset she wore in the role of Elizabeth Swann.

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Growth Spurt: Slimline Keira in Gucci at a premiere (left) and an enhanced Kiera for Pirates of the Caribbean (right)

But it was all an illusion, made possible by the film-studio art of "bosom make-up". It is a skill from Hollywood's golden age that fell out of favour with the advent of silicone enhancement.

Miss Knightley said: "They painted my t**s on me for the films, which is extraordinary because it's kind of a dying art form - in the past, they used to have whole sections of the studios devoted to bosom make-up.

"And I loved it, completely loved it. Because it was the first time in my life I had big t**s, and I didn't even need surgery.'

She said the process of creating the cleavage took 45 minutes every morning before filming started.

A make-up artist would apply a slightly darker shade of base make-up between Miss Knightley's own breasts to create a shadow to increase the 'cleavage effect'.

The actress's assets were digitally enhanced in movie posters for her 2004 film King Arthur. In British versions she appeared in her natural state, but in posters for the US they had grown to a C-cup size, causing much debate among cinema-goers.

Miss Knightley said she was anxious not to be typecast in her Pirates role and took the risk of appearing in the 2005 film Domino as a model turned bounty-hunter.

In an interview in Easy Living magazine the actress, who is dating actor Rupert Friend, tells how she solved the dilemma of nudity required in Domino after being told by director Tony Scott that the role called for her naked bottom to be displayed on screen during a sex scene.

"I said, 'You can have my t**s, but you can't have my a**.' And he was going, 'I just want the a**; I don't want the t**s.'

"Then one day Tony called me in to his office and there were three very beautiful women standing there completely naked, and I couldn't quite take my eyes off bits of them.

"And he said, 'Which one do you want, then?'"

The actress was being asked to pick a derrière-double. She said: "I did pick a very beautiful bum."

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Uplifting: Keira's chest was digitally boosted for the U.S. promotional posters of King Arthur

Chanel babe: Keira strips off for the Coco Mademoiselle ads

Cotillard wins best actress Oscar

LOS ANGELES, Feb. 24 (Xinhua) -- France's Marion Cotillard won the best actress Oscar award Sunday for her role in "La Vie en Rose."

Acting as a French singer in the film, Cotillard beat favorite Julie Christie, who had been expected to grab a second Oscar for "Away From Her."

Christie played a heartbreaking turn as a woman succumbing to Alzheimer's in "Away From Her." She won best actress 42 years ago for "Darling."

Cotillard tearfully thanked her director, Olivier Dahan.

"Maestro Olivier, you rocked my life. You have truly rocked my life," said Cotillard, who is a dynamo as Piaf, playing the warbling chanteuse through three decades, from raw late teens as a singer rising from the gutter through international stardom and her final days in her frail 40s.

"Thank you life, thank you love. And it is true that there are some angels in this city."

A relatively fresh face in Hollywood, Cotillard has U.S. credits that include "Big Fish," "A Good Year" and the upcoming "Public Enemies."

The best supporting-actor award went to Javier Bardem for his role as an unshakable executioner in "No Country for Old Men."

"This is pretty amazing," Bardem exclaimed, expressing thanks to, among others, his mother
A Spanish actor, Bardem plays a terrifying yet perversely amusing character in "No Country for Old Men," one of the favorites for Oscard gold.

Tilda Swinton grabbed the best supporting-actress award for her role as a malevolent attorney in "Michael Clayton."

"I have an American agent who is the spitting image of this," said Swinton, fondly looking at her Oscar statuette.

"Really, truly, the same shape head, and it has to be said, the buttocks. And I'm giving this to him, because there's no way I'd be in America at all, ever, on a plane if it wasn't for him," said the Scottish actress, who played a conniving attorney who stops at nothing to achieve her goals in a 3-billion-dollar class-action lawsuit.

Earlier in the evening, the bloody musical "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street" was honored with an Oscar for art direction. Italian production designer Dante Ferretti and his wife, set designer Francesca Lo Schiavo, shared the honor.

"The Golden Compass" led to an Oscar for visual effects.

The Academy Award winner for best film editing is Christopher Rouse for "The Bourne Ultimatum."

The Oscar Academy Award for best animated feature film went to the rat tale "Ratatouille" directed by Brade Bird.

It was the second Oscar win in the category for director Bird who also won the animation Oscar for 2004's "The Incredibles."

"Ratatouille" tells the story of a gourmand rat who fulfills his dream of cooking in a Paris restaurant with help from a clumsy human youth.

The winner of the first Oscar of the night, for best costume design, is Alexandra Byrne for "Elizabeth: The Golden Age."

The Oscar for best makeup was awarded to Didier Lavergne and Jan Archibald for "La Vie en Rose."