Keira Knightley has opened up about how she is still struggling with the way she was treated as her career took off in the early 2000s.
After landing a minor role in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, Knightley rose to prominence at the age of 18 when she starred in a series of hits such as Bend It Like Beckham, Love Actually, and Pirates of the Caribbean.
However, the actress has revealed that her success came at a “big cost,” with constant attention from paparazzi and relentless scrutiny from the media.
“My jaw dropped at the time,” the now 39-year-old actress told in a recent interview. “I didn’t think it was okay at the time. I was very clear on it being absolutely shocking. There was an amount of gaslighting to be told by a load of men that ‘you wanted this.’ It was rape speak. You know, ‘This is what you deserve.’”
Knightley delved into the challenges of being a young woman in the entertainment industry, describing the atmosphere at that time as “very violent, misogynistic.”
She noted that there was a prevalent assumption that her experiences came from a willingness to be “stalked by men,” whether that was because someone was mentally ill, profiting from the attention, or both.
“It was a brutal time to be a young woman in the public eye,” she said, reflecting on the pressure and scrutiny.
The attention intensified during her roles in Pirates of the Caribbean sequels and Pride & Prejudice, the latter of which earned her an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress.
“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 added.
“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.”
Knightley has been candid about how the pressures of fame affected her mental health, admitting that she suffered a “mental breakdown” at the age of 22 in 2007. That same year, she won a libel case against The Daily Mail after it falsely claimed that she had an eating disorder.
Now, Knightley believes that social media has only intensified the challenges that young people experience, placing fame into “a whole other context” by exposing the damage it has inflicted on young women and teenage girls.
“Ultimately, that’s what fame is — it’s being publicly shamed,” she said. “A lot of teenage girls don’t survive that.”
For this reason, Knightley has expressed reservations about her own children pursuing careers in the public eye. She shares two daughters with musician James Righton and has said that she wouldn’t encourage them to follow a path into acting until they’re “grown-up.”
“Could I, in all good conscience, say to my kid, ‘You should do that?’ No,” she said. “But am I grateful for it? Yes. But then that’s life, isn’t it?”
Fortunately, Knightley added, her children have yet to show interest in acting. Their current career aspirations are a bit more unconventional — they’re interested in owning a candy shop and, notably, becoming a bear. Knightley joked about the latter aspiration, saying, “I don’t think that’s going to work.”
