Keira Knightley struggled with playing 'everybody's object of lust' in her teens
Keira Knightley also said she pushed herself to 'burnout' in her youth by being consumed with a desire to succeed in acting.
PHOTO: Reuters file
PUBLISHED ONMarch 09, 2023 5:23 AM
Keira Knightley struggled with playing "everybody's object of lust" in her teens.
The Pirates of the Caribbean actress, 37, landed the role of aristocrat-turned-pirate Elizabeth Swann alongside Johnny Depp and Orlando Bloom in the swashbuckling franchise when she was 17, after her breakthrough role as a tomboy footballer in Bend it Like Beckham, and said the role left her feeling "very stuck".
She told the April issue of Harper's Bazaar magazine about the part: "She was the object of everybody's lust. Not that she doesn't have a lot of fight in her.
"But it was interesting coming from being really tomboyish to getting projected as quite the opposite.
"I felt very constrained. I felt very stuck. So the roles afterwards were about trying to break out of that."
Keira added about starting acting early: "I had quite an entrance into adult life, an extreme landing because of the experience of fame at a very early age.
"There's a funny place where women are meant to sit, publicly, and I never felt comfortable with that. It was a big jolt ... I was being judged on what I was projecting."
Keira, who has daughters Edie, seven, and four-year-old Delilah with her Klaxons musician husband James Righton, 39, added that she thinks of 2003 to 2008 as "a very tricky five-year window" in her career despite appearing in box office hits Love Actually, Pride and Prejudice and Atonement, as she felt "powerless".
She added: "I didn't have a sense of how to articulate it. It very much felt like I was caged in a thing I didn't understand."
Keira also said about pushing herself to "burnout" in her youth by being consumed with a desire to succeed in acting: "I was incredibly hard on myself. I was never good enough.
"I was utterly single-minded. I was so ambitious. I was so driven. I was always trying to get better and better and improve, which is an exhausting way to live your life. Exhausting.
"I am in awe of my 22-year-old self, because I'd like a bit more of her back. And it's only by not being like that any longer that I realise how extraordinary it was. But it does have a cost... burnout."
Source: Bang
