Keira Knightley is grateful for all the success she’s seen, particularly early on in her career — but she said it came at a significant cost.
In a conversation with the Los Angeles Times about her upcoming Netflix series “Black Doves,” Knightley looked back at her time as a rising star, revealing how it changed her life for better and for worse.
“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,” she shared. “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.”
Knightley continued, “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.”
That period of Knightley’s career began with “Bend It Like Beckham,” but went to another level when she was cast as Elizabeth Swann in the “Pirates of the Caribbean” franchise as well as in Richard Curtis’ now-iconic Christmas film “Love Actually.”
The actress also reflected on the numerous predatory comments she received from men in her early career. She recalled being told on more than one occasion that she “wanted this” when it came to the attention she got in the wake of her fame.
“There was an amount of gaslighting to be told by a load of men that ‘you wanted this,’” she said. “It was rape speak. You know, ‘This is what you deserve.’ It was a very violent, misogynistic atmosphere.”
Knightley added, “They very specifically meant I wanted to be stalked by men. Whether that was stalking because somebody was mentally ill, or because people were earning money from it — it felt the same to me. It was a brutal time to be a young woman in the public eye.”
Her latest project “Black Doves” finds her in the lead as a woman with a secret identity who falls into an affair with a man who is assassinated for his connection to her. The series is now streaming on Netflix.