In a young Hollywood overrun with burned-out 22-year-olds, Keira Knightley, with her porcelain- skinned poise and propensity for wearing underwear, stands a cut above the fray. Vogue not only tapped the English rose for its September cover, it also co-hosted, along with Chanel, last night's Cinema Society screening of her new film The Duchess. The allure of the actress proved such that even gossip maven Cindy Adams endured the rigors of the press line for the chance to chat her up.

A crowd that included Salman Rushdie, Daphne Guinness, and Susan Sarandon packed into the Public Theater's auditorium to watch Knightley light up the screen as the unsinkable Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire, the legendary eighteenth-century fashion plate and socialite, who suffers at the hands of a cold and philandering husband (played expertly here by Ralph Fiennes).

After the credits rolled and a tear or two had been discreetly wiped away, guests made their way across the block to the yet-to-be-opened Cooper Square Hotel for Champagne and shepherd's pie. Knightley, who shone, quite literally, in a bejeweled Chanel Haute Couture frock, gamely divulged her secret for surviving all those bodice-ripping love scenes. "Vodka," she revealed. "Quite a lot, really." She wasn't kidding. "I do seem to remember there being a hip flask passed around," confirmed Dominic Cooper, the actor who played her on-screen lover, Charles Grey. Seriously, Dominic? How much Belvedere does a chap need to deal with the fact that he's kissing Keira Knightley?

— Evelyn Crowley