If you look back on Keira Knightley’s first decade of credits as an actress, it’s pretty mind-blowing. Her second movie credit is Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace — prior to starring in Bend It Like Beckham, Pirates of the Caribbean, Love Actually and Pride & Prejudice all in the matter of three years. The British actress just recently talked about the early days of her career, and she didn’t hold back about that time being “very brutal” for her, but she also discussed one major bright side to it.
Keira Knightley’s latest leading role is in the TV show Black Doves, which just dropped for those with a Netflix subscription and has an incredible Rotten Tomatoes score. While promoting the series, she spoke to the Los Angeles Times about her career thus far, including her early days in the business. She recalled her professional beginnings with these words:
I was very lucky. I did little bits [of acting] during my summer holidays, nothing was massively successful. It was only a positive experience for me. It wasn’t until I was 16, with ‘Bend It Like Beckham,’ that it suddenly blew up.
During the interview, Knightley was speaking to a question about whether she would allow her kids to act after her own experience. She said they “haven’t expressed an interest”, but she wouldn’t allow them to do anything public until they are grown up because their privacy is very important to her. She emphasized that point by getting raw about the vast amount of attention she received before revealing the silver lining:
It’s very brutal to have your privacy taken away in your teenage years, early 20s, and to be put under that scrutiny at a point when you are still growing. Having said that, I wouldn’t have the financial stability or the career that I do now without that period. I had a five-year period between the age of 17 and 21-ish, and I’m never going to have that kind of success again. It totally set me up for life. Did it come at a cost? Yes, it did. It came at a big cost. Knowing the cost, could I, in all good conscience, say to my kid, you should do that? No. But am I grateful for it? Yes. But then that’s life, isn’t it? Luckily, my kids are completely uninterested.
Becoming famous as a young woman in the early 2000s was no walk in the park, yet Keira Knightley said she can certainly thank her success to this period in her life. Those early box office hits of hers set her up for stability, and she still benefits from that today. That being said, she didn’t mince words regarding the “very violent, misogynistic atmosphere” she endured as a young star in the public eye in her teens and 20s.
The Imitation Game star credits her ability to get through it to her “very stable family background,” where her close relatives and loved ones “had no skin in the game.” She recalls thinking the way she was treated was not OK at the time, but she felt like she often dealt with gaslighting as “a load of men” told her she “wanted this” and it’s what she deserved. The actress even likened how she was spoken to as “rape speak.”
Keira Knightley has been reflecting quite a bit as of late. Such topics she’s revisited are the rumors that she had an eating disorder, how she was “taken down publicly” for starring in Pirates and how her famous Love Actually scene is actually rather “creepy.” Following Knightley’s experiences as a young actress and those of others, one can only hope future generations don’t have to contend with the same treatment. Surely, we can agree that young women should be protected, rather than shamed, while they seek to create their art and secure financial stability.