#270. Skoop : Hype - Sienna Miller on 'The Edge of Love'

Even Sienna Miller will admit that she's been getting more attention for her life off-screen than for the roles she's played in films like Factory Girl and Casanova. She'd probably like you to forget her headline-grabbing hook-ups with Jude Law and Rhys Ifans, not to mention Balthazar Getty.

Thanks to Lindsay Lohan, Miller is getting a break. She replaced Lohan in The Edge of Love, a steamy biopic in which she and Keira Knightley play real-life women who romance poet Dylan Thomas while forming a deep friendship of their own. And she's collecting some great reviews.

Q: When did you find out you were going to be replacing Lindsay Lohan?

A: I was on holiday in Mexico and John Maybury, the director, who was a friend, phoned me up and said, 'Get out of the sun.' And I was like, 'I will not get out of the sun. I deserve this holiday.' And he said, 'No, you're coming back to be in my film, Edge of Love, which is set in the '40s in London, and it won't work if you have a suntan.' So I got on the next plane, flew back and had practically no time to get prepared.

Related: Sienna Miller's Red-Carpet Style Gallery

Q: Were you surprised at the media attention generated by your on-screen relationship with co-star Keira Knightley?

A: It all went way overboard. I'm not sure how it all got leaked. Suddenly, in England, there were like these tabloid headlines, 'Lesbian Romp -- Miller and Knightley.' It was hyperbolized to the degree of just complete ridiculousness. There is a scene where our lips meet very briefly, and that became the big lesbian kiss. And we do take a bath together but it's not very erotic. There'll be a few disappointed men, I'm sure.

Q: So what's your relationship with Keira really like?

A: We were friends before we did the film and we became even closer. To this day she's one of my closest friends. Since we were playing such an intense relationship between these two women, I think it was really important that we did get on well.

Q: What did the two of you do for fun?

A: We're both quite nerdy. We talked about books and we played cards and did the Guardian crossword puzzle. There was a lot of that. Keira is learning the flute at the moment and I'm learning the piano, which I used to play when I was younger. So we really were nerdy, living together in this house in Wales, walking around in our pajamas and going for long walks.

Related: Celebrity Best Friends

Q: What kind of support do you get from each other?

A: We talk about what you talk about with any girlfriend, just what's going on in your life. She gives me good advice and hopefully vice versa. I think we keep ourselves afloat, if things happen in the press that are hard to deal with or you give in to that awful temptation to occasionally Google yourself and be mortified at what people can write about you. It's hard to ignore it. Keira will phone me up. She's like, 'I'm thinking about doing it.' I'm like, 'I am, too, but don't do it.' And we'll kind of talk each other out of it.

Q: This is a movie about the power of love to change people's lives. How would you define it?

A: Whoa! I think love is a really hard thing to understand. I'm not sure what happens at the edge of love. I think probably a lack of intelligence, I think people in love are just going with their heart, probably, and not their head.

Q: You've just debuted a fashion line with your sister. Have you always been interested in clothes?

A: I think people think I'm more fashion-y than I actually am as a person. I don't have a stylist. I don't plan outfits. It's quite thrown together and I often look quite disheveled. But I think clothes and bright colors can definitely affect the mood, the way you feel. But working with my sister is wonderful because I don't get to spend enough time with her. She's a proper designer with a first in design from St. Martin's. When she was studying, I'd kind of get involved and say, 'What about making this shorter or this longer, or taking this in here?' So it was a very organic thing for us to do. Obviously my involvement helps draw attention to the label, but my passion is acting. But we have a really great time doing it.

Q: Talk about a change of pace, you went on to co-star in G.I. Joe.

A: I'd never done a huge studio movie, and I felt like it was time to do something where I wasn't having a breakdown or addicted to heroin or dying at the end. My parents were getting fed up with my intense dramas. They were like, 'Please, just stop doing these films. You're killing us.' I actually love G.I. Joe, with things blowing up all around you all the time. I'd never done fight training, let alone been to a gym. So this was like a whole new experience.~Jeanne Wolf
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ABOUT JEANNE WOLF
Jeanne Wolf is West Coast Editor for Parade Magazine, the most widely read magazine in the world. Her recent stories on Katie Holmes, John Travolta, Oprah Winfrey, Javier Bardem, Ashton Kutcher, and Jay Leno made international news, while her daily column 'Celebrity Parade' on Parade.com creates a continual stir on the internet.

Jeanne Wolf is one of the country's most respected journalists -- reporter, writer, producer and editor -- who covers every aspect of show business for TV, radio, newspapers, magazines and the internet. Her contributions have been rewarded with the coveted Publicists Guild Press Award.

Source : Parade Magazine