Keira Knightley‘s life changed forever in 2003 when the the back-to-back releases of Disney’s blockbuster “Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl” and Richard Curtis’ Christmas romance “Love Actually” turned her into a global star practically overnight. The actor was 17 years old when she shot these movies and 18 when they opened. Such instant fame as a teenager came at a “big price,” Knightley recently told the Los Angeles Times.
The actor has been vocal in interviews throughout her career about how the press took her down publicly during this era of her career, whether it constant body shaming or hounds of paparazzi stalking her. Knightley told the Times that she also found herself “stalked by men” amid her “Pirates” success, and to make matters worse she was told she deserved such behavior.
“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,” Knightley said. “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 said that her “jaw dropped at time” over how she was treated by the public and “I didn’t think it was ok 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.’ It was a very violent, misogynistic atmosphere.”
“They very specifically meant I wanted to be stalked by men,” she continued. “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.”
Knightley concluded, “Social media has put that in a whole other context, when you look at the damage that’s been done to young women, to teenage girls. Ultimately, that’s what fame is — it’s being publicly shamed. A lot of teenage girls don’t survive that.”
Knightley’s career would go on to include acclaimed prestige dramas such as “Atonement” and “Pride and Prejudice,” the latter of which earned her an Oscar nomination for best actress. But she remembered that during her “Pirates” run she was relentlessly mocked by the press for being a bad actor.
“It’s a funny thing when you have something that was making and breaking you at the same time,” Knightley recently told The Times of London. “I was seen as shit because of them, and yet because they did so well I was given the opportunity to do the films that I ended up getting Oscar nominations for. They were the most successful films I’ll ever be a part of and they were the reason that I was taken down publicly. So they’re a very confused place in my head.”
Head over to the Los Angeles Times’ website to read Knightley’s interview in its entirety.
