Keira Knightley
Keira Knightley
Keira Christina Knightley is a British actress. She began acting as a child on television and made her film debut in 1995. She had a supporting role as Sabé in Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menaceand her first significant role came in the psychological horror film The Hole. She gained widespread recognition in 2002 after co-starring in the film Bend It Like Beckham and achieved international fame in 2003 after appearing as Elizabeth Swann in the Pirates of...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionMovie Actress
Date of Birth26 March 1985
CityLondon, England
In this business, fame lasts for a second. You can be blown up and be blown down. People keep losing interest in faces because new ones come along every single second. I'm one at the moment. Tomorrow I won't be. That's cool. I'm not saying that when it does end, I'll be like, 'Yay! It's ending.' But I'll move on and do something else because that's what has to be done. It's about survival. If you're sad about it, then you're in the wrong job.
I don't know, I don't know him. He's very good looking though.
I can't actually walk, but I can stand rather well.
I feel immediately at home in New York or Washington. That's fantastic. But, it takes a lot of getting used to being a Londoner, coming to L.A. So, it was strange. It took me about a month to sort of settle down. Then, I really liked it.
Humans who see something different than them want to hate it and tear it down. Britain had a government policy that allowed prejudice to destroy someone's life, and today there is still homophobia at home and elsewhere, like Russia or Greece. It's still a relevant discussion. While women have it better than the 1940s or '50s, sexism is still prevalent.
I think quite often when you have a hell of a lot more money and time, as you very much do on a big studio film, you don't necessarily have to make the decisions right there. You can always goback and reshoot it.
Half of my mum's family is Welsh. I remember when I was a kid she used to read to me, and witches and wizards in books always had a Welsh accent, so I guess I took it from that really.
You live with a writer [a mother], and you grow up with their words, their kind of fantasies, and I'd pretty much seen every single one of her plays, and been in a lot of rehearsal rooms, so it felt very natural and easy. It was lovely to get an opportunity to do that professionally as well.
Some people say Dylan Thomas mischievous, he's a child, and other people say he's quite demonic. I don't think we should dictate about him, if that's your view of him, that's wonderful, but it's great to know that other people think differently.
The highest percentage of England's top jobs are filled by graduates from about two different universities.
I worked with John Maybury on The Jacket and I think he's an extraordinary film-maker. I read the first drafts of this piece when I was working on The Jacket, and we'd so fallen in love with him that we thought he was the only person that should direct this! We wrote poems for him, we sent him champagne and cakes. Four years later he finally read it.
In LA, I'm twice the size- height and everything else- of most of the other actresses who are going for an audition.
I like to do the pictures before people get too self-conscious. I like to be spontaneous and get a shot before the subject thinks too much about it.
It's an interesting thing when you discover something about yourself. To go: 'Wow, I'm not the person I thought I was. I'm in the middle of something and I can't actually deal with it.'