Famous Faces
Keira can’t believe her luck
Before she’d turned 20, Keira Knightley already had a CV that most actresses can only dream of for their entire career. But she’s still not quite sure why, as she explains to Darryl Smith.
From the launch pad of Bend It Like Beckham in 2002 the daughter of Scots playwright Sharman MacDonald and actor Will Knightley has mixed it with the finest talent in the acting playground.
She kissed Orlando Bloom and was chased by Johnny Depp in Pirates Of The
Caribbean, threw sticks and stones as Guinevere alongside Clive Owen and Ioan Gruffudd in
King Arthur, and walked up the aisle surrounded by a host of British stars in Love
Actually.
And yet none of it was before time for impatient Keira. At the ripe old age of three she told her bemused parents that she wanted an agent!
Standing taller than you think at 5ft 7in, that precocious nature is now restricted to her talent.
Instead she seems rather embarrassed by her recent success and totally at ease with the idea that it could all end tomorrow.
“Acting is a profession where you’re hot one minute and not the next, and that’s totally cool with me,” she says candidly. “That’s what I find most fascinating and exciting about it, that it can be gone in a puff of smoke.
“When you’ve had a bit of success it’s natural to take a step back and think ‘how did that happen?’
“The answer for me is, I haven’t got a clue. I’m not the most beautiful, I’m not the most talented, I’m not the most of anything really. I’ve got friends who are a million times better than me. But for one reason or another, I’ve got parts and they haven’t.
“I have no explanation whatsoever, so I try not to look into it too much. I just enjoy what’s coming along and if it all stops tomorrow I can say I enjoyed what’s happening now.”
It’s unlikely Keira’s dreams will be clouded by that puff of smoke any time soon. You could say that even before she was born she was used to getting her own way.
Mum Sharman, originally from Glasgow, was desperate for a brother or sister to their first-born, Caleb. Husband Will told her that the only way they could afford to have another child was if she sold a play. So Sharman wrote When I Was a Girl, I Used To Scream And Shout and nine months later Keira was born in
Teddington.
Two decades on, the show continues to run and run for the young starlet. She has already signed up for two sequels of
Pirates Of The Caribbean, the first of which won’t be on screen until next year, but her fans won’t have to wait that long to see her in a corset again — this summer she stars as Elizabeth Bennet in a big screen adaptation of
Pride And Prejudice.
Before that, however, she will be wearing very different garb for The
Jacket. In an alternative role from those we’ve seen her try before, she plays Jackie, a lonely alcoholic who appears in the futuristic dreams of mental patient Adrien Brody —who won a Best Actor Oscar for
The Pianist.
The film was produced by George Clooney and filmed in Glasgow.
“I was in Dublin shooting King Arthur and I’d been sent 10 scripts. Nine of them were variations of the same pretty, uptight British girl, but Jackie was this damaged character. It was just completely different and a role I wanted to play immediately. It was an opportunity to do an American accent as well, which I hadn’t tried before.”
Keira’s ambition saw her travel to London on her day off from the King Arthur
shoot to meet with director John Maybury and some of the producers of the film. But a debilitating case of food poisoning looked like scuppering her plans.
“I spent most of my energy trying not to project vomit on these people I desperately wanted to work with,” she recalls with a degree of embarrassment. Maybury’s words weren’t going to settle her stomach any, either.
“He told me that he did not think I was right for the role and he didn’t want me.
“At that moment, I had nothing to lose. I declared that if I didn’t get the part of Jackie I would be stuck in corsets for the next 20 years, and asked him to let me read. He agreed, and promised, if he was convinced, that he would hire me.
“We shook on it, I read the part, he gave me some notes, then gave me his phone number and offered me the job.
“It’s not that I don’t like playing in corsets, though they are not the most comfortable things, it’s just I wanted to do something different.
“As a British actress working in Hollywood you are most likely to get offered period pieces, which is fair enough, but if it’s ever possible to try and get longevity out of an acting career, you’ve got to prove that you can be versatile.
“So you have to change as much as possible. If you’re just relying on pouting, lovely hair and very pretty costumes, you’re going to have a very short career. Even shorter than it will be anyway.
“I’m not necessarily saying that if you do change as much as possible, that means you will definitely have a career that’s going to last a long time, but it’s certainly going to be better than if you don’t.
“And I think all you can do is try to show that you can be different people and characters, and move away from previous perceptions of yourself.
“That’s all I can do to try and make my career as long as possible. Whether it works or not, I haven’t a clue — but I’ve got to try it.”
At least the nauseous Keira made more of an impression on director Maybury than producer Clooney when he paid a visit to the set.
“I said ‘Hi’ and ‘Bye!’ and that was it — and the ‘Hi’ and ‘Bye’ were rather breathless!
“I had a friend who was working with me on the set and she kept saying, ‘Go up and talk to him!’ and I said, ‘I don’t know what to say!’ So I failed completely and haven’t seen him since.”
Failure is not something that sits easily with Keira, not since she made her television debut in a long forgotten BBC1 play,
Royal Celebration. It starred Leslie Phillips, Kenneth Cranham and Minnie Driver. Keira was aged just eight and was listed in the titles as ‘Little Girl’.
But that little girl had big plans and over the coming years she was to work during the school holidays in various productions for TV, such as Joanna Trollope’s
A Village Affair.
Her big screen bow was a slightly more lusty affair, as the hand-maiden lookalike to Natalie Portman’s Queen Amidala in
Star Wars: Episode I — The Phantom Menace and she was soon to break out on her own as the tomboy footballer Jules Paxton in
Bend It Like Beckham.
By then, she had already made her way on television as well — critically acclaimed for her role as Lara in ITV’s
Dr Zhivago — and she was still only 16!
It’s all the more remarkable when you consider that Keira has had dyslexia from a young age and had to wear special glasses in adolescence to help her read scripts.
She was helped through that by her family and friends, and they continue to support her now as her career blossoms.
“I’ve got a very close-knit friends and family group, which is great. They’re all fab and they tell me when I’m acting up, and laugh at me as much as possible which, I think, is very important and very British.
“I bought a flat in London last year and live there with six of my girlfriends (she’s the only actress amongst them). At least if the acting falls through I’ll have got a flat out of it!
“I’ve been asked if I would consider moving to Hollywood and, if it’s absolutely critical for my career then yes, but I can’t imagine that it ever would be.
“I love where I’m from, I’m very much a Londoner, and the more time I spend away from home the more I love it.
“That said, I do like it in Los Angeles — the weather’s good and the beaches are nice. When I first arrived, I couldn’t get my head around it. I really didn’t like it and I wasn’t sure why.
“I think it’s possibly because it’s very spread out and I’m used to built-up cities. A lot of people say Los Angeles is a city without culture, but I think if you look for it you can find it. I like visiting, but I don’t know if I could actually live there. I’m kind of happy where I am.”
And that doesn’t just go for her London flat but her sky-rise career too.
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