DIANE KRUGER CONDUCTS AN ORCHESTRA

Troy star Diane Kruger portrays the assistant to musical genius Ludwig Van Beethoven played by Ed Harris in Copying Beethoven who is hired to copy his sheet music because in 1824 there was no such thing as Xerox. Diane had the dubious but challenging job of conducting a 55 member symphony orchestra in the film’s climactic performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.

Diane’s character has composing ambitions of her own and tickles the ivories in the film but in real life she never felt coordinated enough to study piano on her own.

“Well we had recordings of the Ninth Symphony. The writers and producers had given us specific extracts of the Ninth Symphony that they needed for that specific seen. Ed and I had a teacher from UCLA who was a conductor and taught conducting. She would come over four times a week and four hour classes.”

Diane is currently in Montreal shooting the French film The Age of Darkness,and then she’s off to Croatia to make Spring Break In Bosnia with Richard Gere. Copying Beethoven opens Friday in theaters.rn

“I just have two left hands pretty much and I never understood how you could do one thing with one hand and then another thing with your other hand so it was truly difficult for me to learn. I don’t think I’m a virtuoso in that.”rn