Top 5 Performances: Keira Knightley

5. The Imitation Game

It took almost 10 years for Knightley to get her Oscar nomination, and while it's nowhere near as meaty a role as Elizabeth Bennet, her performance as Joan Clarke remains an impressive bit of understated acting. Knightley never overplays the enthusiastic nature of her character, mending her portrayal over the lighter and darker tones of the story of Alan Turing (Benedict Cumberbatch) by providing equal parts determination and encouragement to her fellow codebreakers to decrypt German Intelligence codes, and angst and emotion in her personal affairs with Turing. Her final scene is particularly terrific.

4. The Duchess

A role right in Knightley's line of English roses, but when you're good at something why not take advantage of that? Anyway, the good casting of Knightley should not take away from her impressive work in this brooding drama about the life of 18th - century aristocrat Georgia Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire. The film is not particularly distinctive outside of the excellent costuming and Knightley's performance as the extravagant, hedonistic society lady who gradually grows the strength to go against her cold domineering husband (Ralph Fiennes). Knightley brings excellent anti-chemistry with Fiennes, and with Hayley Atwell and Dominic Cooper as her best friend and lover. The film is a bit blandly directed, but Knightley brings a great deal of strength and poignancy to this portayal of a woman at the height of comfort, but gradually realising her powerlessness in a man's world.

3. Atonement

People tend to forget how little screentime Knightley gets as Cecilia in this wonderful melodrama WWII romance directed by Joe Wright. James McAvoy and Saoirse Ronan get the meatier roles, particularly in the earlier stages of the film, as the lovelorn gardener with a saucy heart under his rough exterior, and the jealous, manipulative younger sister. Knightley however is appropriately cool and elegantly aloof in these earlier stages, which makes the subsequent revelations of hidden emotions and feelings for McAvoy's Robbie, culminated in a deeply passionately felt love scene, a truly breathtaking scene. After that scene Knightley excels as the reactive face of the film, wearing each moment of heartache and longing for her true love as effectively as McAvoy wears the tear and stress of war, and both actors help make the unconventional ending of the film as powerful as it is.

2. Begin Again

Unlike the other four performances here, Knightley's Gretta James is a woman not from a specific time period in the past but a modern-day musician making her way through New York. In turn this makes it one of her least stylized, most naturalistic performances, and I must admit I absolutely loved it. Striking up a friendship with Dan (Mark Ruffalo), the two begin on a musical partnership and the duo have excellent, low-key chemistry that works very well for the film. Knightley on her own though is great. She makes her abandonment by her singer boyfriend (Adam Levine) resonate well despite Levine's pretty terrible performance, sings her songs terrifically, and is just a ball of unbridled old-fashioned charm and likable winningess.

1. Pride and Prejudice

A brilliant breakout role for Knightley into leading roles which garnered her her first Oscar nomination (and in my opinion either her or Felicity Huffman for Transamerica should have won). A universally acclaimed adaptation of Jane Austen's most beloved novel, I'll leave my specific thoughts on Knightley's performance to a future Head-to-Head profile on all the Elizabeths and Mr Darcy's I have seen, but in short Knightley excellently carries the film on her shoulders, making for a headstrong, sassy heroine who both fits Austen's interpretation of the character as an independent figure to admire, but also showing the weaker aspects of the character's pride and prejudices.

6. Bend it Like Beckham
7. The Jacket
8. A Dangerous Method
9. Never Let Me Go
10. Seeking a Friend For the End of the World