\tKeira Knightley said in an interview with The Times of London that she has erased from her memory the \u201cpublic shaming\u201d she endured from the press amid her breakout during the \u201cPirates of the Caribbean\u201d trilogy. The Oscar nominee was just 17 years old when she debuted as Elizabeth Swann in 2003\u2019s \u201cCurse of the Black Pearl.\u201d Two \u201cPirates\u201d sequels followed: 2006\u2019s \u201cDead Man\u2019s Chest\u201d and 2007\u2019s \u201cAt World\u2019s End.\u201d<\/p>\n
\tThe \u201cPirates\u201d franchise was enormously successful, with \u201cDead Man\u2019s Chest\u201d setting records at the time for fastest movie to gross $1 billion worldwide and becoming the third highest-grossing film in history. But it also led to the tabloid press hounding Knightley and rampant speculation from the media that she was suffering from an eating disorder due to her thin frame. \t<\/p>\n
\t\u201cIn that classic trauma way I don\u2019t remember it,\u201d Knightley told The Times. \u201cThere\u2019s been a complete delete, and then some things will come up and I\u2019ll suddenly have a very bodily memory of it because, ultimately, it\u2019s public shaming, isn\u2019t it? It\u2019s obviously part of my psyche, given how young I was when it happened. I\u2019ve been made around it.\u201d <\/p>\n
\t\t\t \t\t\tPopular on Variety\t\t \t \t\t \t \tKnightley said she was \u201cunbelievably lucky\u201d to have \u201can incredibly loving\u201d support system of family, friends and \u201clovely boyfriends\u201d to help her offset the press\u2019 bullying. But the actor still had to contend with questions about weight during interviews. In some cases, interviewers brought up the topic by asking about other actors.<\/p>\n
\t\u201cI remember viscerally one of the Olsen twins had anorexia, and she went into a clinic,\u201d Knightley said. \u201cI remember being asked about it on a press tour, like it was a joke. She was meant to be shamed for seeking help for anorexia. I remember sitting there just being like, \u2018Wow, this is wild.\u2019 Can you imagine? That made me really emotional. That\u2019s not even about me, it\u2019s about her. I still can\u2019t bear it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\tKnightley\u2019s career would go on to include acclaimed prestige dramas such as \u201cAtonement\u201d and \u201cPride and Prejudice,\u201d the latter of which earned her an Oscar nomination for best actress. <\/p>\n
\t\u201cIt\u2019s a funny thing when you have something that was making and breaking you at the same time,\u201d Knightley said about the \u201cPirates\u201d franchise. \u201cI 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\u2019ll ever be a part of and they were the reason that I was taken down publicly. So they\u2019re a very confused place in my head.\u201d \t<\/p>\n
\tWhen asked about the possibility of her starring in a Hollywood franchise again, Knightley shut it down by saying: \u201cThe hours are insane. It\u2019s years of your life. You have no control over where you\u2019re filming, how long you\u2019re filming, what you\u2019re filming.\u201d<\/p>\n
\tIn an interview with Harper\u2019s Bazaar U.K. last year, Knightley said playing an object of desire like Elizabeth Swann at such a young age left her feeling \u201cstuck\u201d and \u201cconstrained\u201d in Hollywood.<\/p>\n
\t\u201c[Elizabeth Swann] was the object of everybody\u2019s lust,\u201d Knightley continued. \u201cNot that she doesn\u2019t 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\u2026I didn\u2019t have a sense of how to articulate it. It very much felt like I was caged in a thing I didn\u2019t understand.\u201d<\/p>\n
\tKnightley next stars in the Netflix spy thriller \u201cBlack Doves,\u201d streaming Dec. 5. Head over to The Times\u2019 website to read her interview in its entirety.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Keira Knightley said in an interview with The Times of London that she has erased from her memory the \u201cpublic shaming\u201d she endured from the press amid her breakout during the \u201cPirates of the Caribbean\u201d trilogy. The Oscar nominee was just 17 years old when she debuted as Elizabeth Swann in 2003\u2019s \u201cCurse of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":19228,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-movie"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieetv.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieetv.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieetv.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieetv.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieetv.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19226"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/movieetv.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19226\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieetv.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19228"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieetv.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieetv.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieetv.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}