“I felt very constrained”: the role that made Keira Knightley feel “caged”
Even though she’s been a globally recognised name for over 20 years, Keira Knightley still hasn’t left her 30s yet. That’s a testament to her staying power and desire to keep testing herself in a range of different projects that allow her to showcase her range as a performer.
With two Academy Award nominations, a pair of Bafta nods, and a trio of Golden Globes nominations to her name, the actor has thrived tackling as many different characters as possible. This is all the more impressive when it would have been very easy for her star to burn out, having shined so brightly in its earliest years.
Knightley was only 17 years old when the breakthrough sports comedy Bend It Like Beckham was released. The following year, she rocketed to worldwide superstardom, playing the female lead in the swashbuckling blockbuster Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl.
By the time she’d even turned 20, Knightley had followed it up with beloved rom-com Love Actually and blockbuster historical epic King Arthur, but there was more to life than the films guaranteed to do big business at the box office. One thing she never wanted to be was a sex symbol, and being stuffed into a corset as the love interest in a Disney franchise carried that very risk.
“I had quite an entrance into adult life, an extreme landing because of the experience of fame at a very early age,” she said, reflecting on her formative years in an interview with Harper’s Bazaar. “There’s a funny place where women are meant to sit publicly, and I never felt comfortable with that. It was a big jolt.”
One thing that she wasn’t enamoured with was the character of Elizabeth Swann being “the object of everybody’s lust,” although she wouldn’t go so far as denigrating the part outright. “Not that she doesn’t have a lot of fight in her, but it was interesting coming from being really tomboyish to getting projected as quite the opposite.”
Admitting she “felt very constrained” and “very stuck” by that period, Knightley knew she’d have to take charge of her own destiny. “The roles afterwards were about trying to break out of that. I didn’t have a sense to articulate it,” she continued. “It very much felt like I was caged in a thing I didn’t understand.”
That desire to avoid typecasting or doing more of the same is evident in her choice of roles between the first and second Pirates of the Caribbean flicks, which saw her star opposite Adrien Brody in psychological thriller The Jacket, land an Oscar nomination for Pride & Prejudice, and team up with Tony Scott for semi-biographical action thriller Domino. Continuing to mix it up has served her very well in the years since.
