Keira Knightley Reveals Dark Side of Early Financial Success

Keira Knightley revealed in a new interview with The Los Angeles Times, published Dec. 5, that her early teen stardom “set me up for life” financially, but came at a dark personal cost.

Knightley’s starring roles in high-profile early-aughts movies Bend It Like Beckham (2002) and the 2003 double punch of Love, Actually and Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl netted the actor significant paydays and afforded her international stardom. At the same time, she said she had to endure humiliating invasions of her personal life and found it hard to protect herself from some fans.

“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 told the outlet. “Having said that, I wouldn’t have the financial stability or the career that I do now without that period,” she reflected. “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.”

The two-time Oscar nominee continued: “Did it come at a cost? Yes, it did. It came at a big cost. Knowing the cost, could I, in all good conscience, say to my kid, you should do that? No,” she admitted. “But am I grateful for it? Yes. But then that’s life, isn’t it? Luckily, my kids are completely uninterested [in acting].”

Elsewhere in the profile, Knightley recalled being “stalked by men” after her Pirates success, many of whom would send vulgar messages to the then-teenage star. “I was very clear on it [at a young age] being absolutely shocking,” she said. “There was an amount of gaslighting to be told by a load of men that, ‘You wanted this.’ It was rape speak,” she said. “You know, ‘This is what you deserve.’ It was a very violent, misogynistic atmosphere.”

Luckily, the public spotlight on Knightley is far less bright these days, though her career continues to flourish. As she told The Times, her early success allowed her to transition into a career of multi-faceted roles in everything from experimental adaptations (2012’s Anna Karenina) to musicals (2015’s Begin Again) and acclaimed biopics like The Imitation Game (2014) and Colette (2018). She has twice been nominated for Oscars: in 2005 for Pride and Prejudice; and in 2014 for The Imitation Game.