A mental breakdown. Forgetting her role in one of the biggest movies of her career. What almost
led to her retirement. Keira Knightley's lifelong transformation will shock and surprise you.
Some people struggle for years to figure out what to do with their lives, while others are blessed
to know exactly what they want to do from a young age. Knightley falls squarely in the
latter category. When she was just 3, she told her parents that she wanted to have an agent.
Her mother Sharman Macdonald is an actress and writer, while her dad Will Knightley is an actor,
so little Keira was certain that she wanted a creative career.
As she recalled to The Independent in 2012,
"[Agents] were always phoning the house and I
answered the phone [...] and it was quite exciting when they phoned up."
Knightley wasn't allowed to get an agent until she was seven, but she soon found success,
as she was just eight when she landed her first TV gig,
an episode of the British anthology series Screen One.
While Knightley started acting as a kid, school was always her top priority.
Her parents made sure that showbiz didn't take over her life, so she was limited to
small jobs over her summer breaks. This served two purposes. It allowed her to
have a normal childhood, and it also gave her an incentive to manage her dyslexia,
which she was diagnosed with as a child. As she recounted to The Independent,
"The head teacher [of my school] told [my parents], 'Get her to do [acting] but tell
her she is not allowed to do it unless the grades go up' [...] It was that that led
to the getting over [of the dyslexia] and starting to read and working very hard."
After years of small appearances in shows and films, Knightley landed a role in one
of the biggest movies in the galaxy. That would be 1999's Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace,
as she played the handmaiden Sabé when she was 12 years old. It may have been quite the opportunity
for a young actor, but alas, it sounds like Knightley didn't exactly have the best time
on set. During an interview with Total Film, she revealed that she doesn't remember much
about her role in the film, apart from having to wear an uncomfortable headdress. As she put it,
"I remember being in the background for such a long time that I’d actually fallen asleep.
I was just sitting in a chair, and I was in the background, but I couldn’t keep my eyes open."
And apparently Knightley didn't even remember her character's name, as she apparently thought
she'd played Natalie Portman's part of Padmé Amidala. As she admitted to ComingSoon in 2020,
"Do you know, I saw the film once when ... I think I was 12 when I did it,
and I saw it the year after, and I've never seen it again."
"I didn't know what I was doing when I got it,
'cause they just said that nobody gives you scripts. It's all very secret."
Knightley racked up a few more acting credits in the years right after Phantom Menace,
but it wasn't until 2002's Bend It Like Beckham that she truly established herself as a force
to be reckoned with. The indie film tells the story of a young British-Indian teenager who
defies her parents and joins a semi-pro soccer team. It was a critical favorite
and a hit with audiences, as it raked in $76 million at the worldwide box office.
Knightley played Jules, the best friend and teammate of lead character Jess.
While it was surely exciting to star in her first major role,
her performance was panned by some critics. Knightley wasn't hurt by the criticism,
though, as she believed that it was actually well deserved. As she admitted to Radio Times in 2007,
"I didn't go to drama school, so I didn't get the training. It was difficult to get over that:
'What am I doing? I'm pretending that I can do this and everybody's telling me I can't."
Bend It Like Beckham made a lot of moviegoers pay attention to Knightley, but it was her turn
as Elizabeth Swann in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise that made her a household name. In 2003,
she joined the series for its first entry, The Curse of the Black Pearl. This was clearly a major
victory for Knightley's career, but she had no idea how successful it would become at the time.
As Richard Curtis, who directed Knightley in Love Actually, recalled to Radio Times,
"I remember Keira Knightley saying that her next project
was 'some pirate thing — probably a disaster.'"
Of course, we know that characterization couldn't have been further from the truth.
Becoming a household name at the age of 18 was a mixed bag for Knightley,
who struggled with the pressures of fame.
"You were that young then?" "I was. I was that young then! Yeah!"
But she wouldn't change anything, as she told Variety in 2018,
"I'm unbelievably lucky now, and my career is in a place where I really enjoy it,
and I have a level of fame that's much less intense. I can deal with it now, and that's great.
But at the time, it was not so great, and took many years of therapy to figure it out."
Despite her early success, Knightley wasn't always taken seriously at the start of her
career. She had several roles under her belt by the time she reached her teens, but many
people thought that she was just a beautiful woman who had lucked into acting. Even worse,
the negativity led to Knightley herself doubting her own talent. As she recalled to Elle in 2006,
"For ages and ages, everybody was going, 'Oh, she's just a pretty face. She absolutely can't
act.' And I was always going, 'Well, maybe they're right; I don't know.'"
But Knightley's turn as Elizabeth Bennet in the 2005 adaptation of Jane Austen's Pride & Prejudice
soon changed all that. She was nominated for an Oscar for the role, which helped her to
command more respect. She also truly enjoyed bringing the iconic literary figure to life,
as she really identified with the character. Furthermore, as she noted to PopEntertainment.com,
"When people read the book, and hopefully, when they see the film,
they will see aspects of themselves in that character."
"You were the last man in the world I could ever be prevailed upon to marry."
Knightley's slim frame has led to a lot of speculation over the years about how she stays so
thin. As her fame grew, rumors began to fly that she was living with an eating disorder.
The gossip was so widespread that she sued the Daily Mail for libel
in 2007 after the tabloid ran a story of a teenager whose anorexia led to her death
and also included a picture of Knightley in a bikini. The headline of that article read,
"If pictures like this one of Keira carried a health warning,
my darling daughter might have lived."
Knightley was awarded 3,000 pounds in damages, with the sum donated to charity.
In response to the speculation, she's been adamant that she's just
naturally thin. As she's explained to the press, her grandmother and great-grandmother
both had eating disorders and she takes the illness seriously,
but her own physique is just how she's built. As she explained to People Magazine in 2006,
"I'm not saying there aren't people in the film industry that suffer from it,
because I am sure that there are. But I'm quite sure I don't have it."
The media scrutiny related to fame took a toll on Knightley's mental health and nearly led to her
early retirement. As she admitted on The Hollywood Reporter's Awards Chatter podcast in 2018,
she had a mental breakdown when she was 22. At one point, she didn't leave her house for
several months. Eventually, she decided that she needed to take a year off from
acting to focus on her mental health and go to therapy after being diagnosed with PTSD.
"Being buffeted by those storms at that age, I found very, very, very difficult."
Knightley ultimately returned to acting after addressing her mental health,
but it was a close call, as she nearly quit altogether. As she admitted to Metro in 2010,
"I wasn't enjoying what I was doing and I felt terribly guilty about that. I remember hating
the idea that I was in a privileged position and couldn't see the point of any of it."
After getting treatment for her mental health and returning to work,
Knightley was thriving both professionally and personally. She landed a string of major
roles in the likes of such films as Never Let Me Go, Seeking a Friend for the End of the World,
and Anna Karenina. She also fell in love, as she married English musician James Righton in 2013
after two years of dating in a quiet ceremony when she was 28. Knightley takes a pragmatic
view towards marriage, looking to her parents as a model. As she disclosed to Glamour in 2014,
"They only [got married] to get a mortgage. But when James proposed, I just thought, Well,
never done that before. It seemed like a fun thing to do."
Knightley's reasons for marrying Righton were also certainly practical. As she put it to Glamour,
"Suppose something happens to your other half and you can't
get into the hospital without that legal paper?"
Nevertheless, the couple appear to be happily in love. As Knightley put it to Glamour UK,
"You only get to choose one member of your family and I made a good choice. So well done, me!"
Knightley leads a rather relaxed life these days. In 2015, she became a mom
for the first time, and now she and her husband have a total of two daughters,
Edie and Delilah. But her career hasn't exactly slowed down. Since becoming a mom,
she's starred in a string of films like The Nutcracker and the Four Realms, The Aftermath, and
Silent Night. Motherhood has even helped her dodge the paparazzi. As she joked to Balance in 2019,
"There's nothing sexy about trying
to control a three-year-old. So I'm pretty much left alone now."
"And then you think, 'Oh, I'm the best parent in the world,' because all of that. And then
three happens." "Mm-hmm."
Of course, there are also new challenges now for Knightley.
Juggling a film career with her home life is no easy feat.
As she admitted to Hello Giggles in 2020, when she has to leave her kids for work,
"The guilt is absolutely constant."
That being said, she's tired of a certain double standard, as she wonders why it's only working
women who are asked how they find a way to balance their careers with parenthood. As she put it,
"Why do we not expect a working man to be looking after their children
as much as their partner is? Why do we assume that they don't feel
guilty about not spending enough time with their children as well?"
Growing older is something that scares a lot of people, and it can be especially
frightening for women in Hollywood. But Keira Knightley isn't worried about getting older,
as she instead hopes to age gracefully. As she put it to the Daily Mail in 2019,
"I walk down the street and I see women with amazing gray hair and
the lines on their face and I think it's the story of their life and I love it and
I feel empowered by it and that's what I want to be when I grow up."
That's not to say that Knightley doesn't feel a rush of panic when she finds a gray hair.
But that has more to do with the fact that getting older and becoming a different version
of yourself can be daunting, even if you're happy with your appearance. As she explained,
"You think you know what your body is and what your face is, then suddenly it changes."
Overall, Knightley has become more secure in who she is as an actress,
and she's learned how to handle her fame. As she noted to Glamour UK in 2014,
"After 25, things just got better and better. Maybe you stop caring
as much about where you should be going and what other people
think - which is all the s--- that makes you very unhappy early on."
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