INTERVIEW:Keira Knightley is just 25, but her image is ubiquitous, and everything, from the leading parts and ad campaigns to the paparazzi shots, feels like it's happened to someone else, she tells DONALD CLARKE
CAN KEIRA KNIGHTLEY be only 25? Don't get me wrong. She still looks like a young thing. With her wide eyes and heart-shaped face, Knightley has weathered the long walk to early adulthood with some grace. But she seems to have been around forever. It's nearly a decade since she broke through in Bend It Like Beckham and, in that period, she has become an immovable part of the celebrity furniture. She's been around so long that – where was she in 2010? – she's had time to take a year off. Such thoughts register strongly while watching her performance in Mark Romanek's Never Let Me Go.Based on a creepy, powerful novel by Kazuo Ishiguro, the film stars Knightley as one of several young people who, from an early age, are raised to be organ donors. Among the other unfortunates, we encounter two of the UK's fastest-rising female stars: Carey Mulligan and Andrea Riseborough. It comes as shock to realise that Mulligan, who burst through last year with An Education, is the same age as Knightley and that Riseborough, star of the recent Brighton Rock, is four years older.
“Have you met Carey?” Knightley asks me. “She would want me to point out that she’s two months younger than me, actually. She doesn’t need any advice. Actually, she has always given me advice.”
Only a cad would begrudge Knightley her year away from the spotlight. Fame brought her an unusual and unfair degree of scrutiny. The success of Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearlin 2003 and Pride & Prejudicein 2005 established her as the hottest British actress of the new century. That success also sparked an extraordinary surge of jealousy. Internet forums are stuffed with bitter comments – fired by wild speculation and lunatic lies – from angry people who regard her every breath as evidence of arrogance and immaturity.
Yet she seems impressively blasé about life in the bear-pit. Perky and jokey, she jumps to her feet when I enter and remains agreeably communicative throughout. You’d have thought that running the press gauntlet would, by this stage in her career, have become an appalling trial. What’s the most tiring question? “I haven’t done this for a while, remember. So it’s really not too bad. I guess the worst question is: ‘What’s your style?’ I really have no answer to that.”
Her personal style? Her conversational style? “Well, I’ve always assumed they meant fashion. Maybe they do mean life in general. I’ll answer it that way in future. That would be interesting. Ha ha ha!”
She does, however, admit that correcting the mass of misinformation can be quite exhausting. Raised in an outer suburb of London, the daughter of Sharman MacDonald, a successful playwright, and Will Knightley, an actor, Keira has never been tempted to move away. Nonetheless, when she returned to the press circus late last year, American interviewers seemed to have decided that she was moving across the Atlantic. Yet again, a snippet of unreliable gossip had hardened into supposed fact. I am interested to hear that she has encountered this titbit. In previous interviews Knightley has always maintained that she works hard at avoiding the circling gossip.
"You can avoid reading something, but you can be damn sure people will still ask you about it. In America, doing interviews for Never Let Me Go, they kept asking me when I was moving to America. It's not happening, I'm afraid. Apparently I collect shoes, as well. That's news to me. There is a whole collection of these regular myths that come out. If they're not detrimental then why worry?"
It is, surely, easy enough to shake off the stuff about collecting shoes or buying houses in Nantucket, but the various defamatory rumours – none of which we’ll repeat here – must, when they break through her carapace, cause her some emotional discomfort.
“It does depend what the inaccuracy is. It’s important not to take it too seriously. If I had control over these things then I might take it more seriously but, given that I don’t, I dismiss it or, if it is really bad, then I sue. I am not moving to America. I don’t collect shoes. But if you want to say those things then I guess that’s fine.”
Knightley has an impressively jolly way of swatting aside the prying questions and requests for confirmation of absurd fabrications.
There must, however, have been times when she wished she’d embarked on a more conventional career. Her childhood friends may not have got to kiss Johnny Depp or to present an Oscar, but they will have had the opportunity to enjoy that first day at university, to embark on relationships without having to avoid lurking photographers, or to change their hairstyle without it becoming a headline story in Heat magazine.
“I don’t ever really wish I’d done something else. I never wanted to do anything else. It would be different if, at some point, I had stood at a crossroads and wondered which way to go. But I didn’t. I knew when I was three I wanted to do this. And I never changed my mind. Maybe that means I don’t have a great imagination. There have been some very difficult moments. But there have been great joys as well. I have been incredibly lucky.”
It must, of course, be remembered that her family was in the business. Mind you, many theatrical parents are appalled when their children elect to follow them on to the stage. Having tramped up too many greasy staircases to too many agents’ offices where no job awaits, they know better than most how hard the profession can be. It often comes as relief when Olivier Minor decides to take up accountancy or public relations.
Indeed, Knightley confirms that her parents were deeply unhappy when, barely a toddler, she began to incline towards the thespian life. They let her do some acting, but hoped dearly that she would grow out of it.
“They deliberately put obstacles in my way,” she says. “That was very useful, because they knew there would be natural obstacles later. If I got bad grades or got a detention then I wasn’t allowed to do it. There were constant things I had to work towards. That was very useful – particularly when I was diagnosed with dyslexia. The acting was this amazing carrot at the end of the stick. I got over it because I had that thing dangled in front of me. Get through it and we will allow you to get an agent.”
Is the dyslexia still a problem? “No. Not so much. By the time I was 11 I was deemed to be fine. I am still very bad at spelling. It was a huge thing when I was younger and that was very difficult when I was doing a reading. You are in this large room with people and you risk making a tit of yourself. To get over that you have to work very hard.”
Knightley does confirm one nugget of Knightley lore. She did indeed secure an agent while still in school. Small parts on TV followed and, like a staggering number of British actors, she made a brief appearance on The Bill. She played Queen Amidala's double in Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menaceand turned up in the dubious though effective British horror film The Hole.
She wasn't the lead in Bend It Like Beckham, Gurinder Chadha's football comedy, but she caught the eye and, when Disney came to embark on the Pirates of the Caribbeansaga, she was duly installed as the plucky Elizabeth Swann. Her elevation to the top of the celebrity tree was sudden, complete and seemingly irreversible. Within a few years, she was named (after Cameron Diaz, of all people) the second-highest-paid female actor in Hollywood and the highest-paid UK performer of either gender.
Meanwhile, magazines, fashion houses and perfume manufacturers squabbled over the right to use her image. This interview takes place in early winter.
Passing through Heathrow airport, I am reminded that, as one face of Chanel, Knightley has become part of the Christmas experience. When yuletide looms, the scent manufacturer bungs her mug on every available column. That must be strange for her. I guess Kim Jong-il rather likes seeing himself everywhere in Pyongyang. It’s a different business if you’re a young woman trying to sneak through Terminal Three unobserved.
“I don’t tend to look,” she says. “No. The thing is that those pictures are not really me. It’s totally a role. It’s fantasy. In a funny kind of way, the paparazzi pictures aren’t me either. I am quite removed from it. It’s quite startling if you suddenly see this version of yourself looking back. That’s embarrassing. I hide and walk away.”
Once again, you have to remind yourself how young Knightley is. She talks like somebody who has been living with fame for decades. Strategies have been devised to avoid encountering her looming face. Attitudes have been adopted to cope with nasty rumours. I wonder if she can still remember when she moved from citizen to celebrity.
“I do remember the moment,“ she says. “Yeah. I got very frightened by it and didn’t understand it. I didn’t know what the hell was going on. I didn’t know who I was. It seemed like there was this other person who had my face and it had all had happened to her. I was 19 or 20 and, at that age, it’s particularly hard. Maybe I have missed some things as a result of all that. But I have had the opportunity to work with extraordinary people. So I always know I’ve been lucky.”
Among the extraordinary people she’s encountered recently is Colin Farrell. The two worked together on an interesting if somewhat muddled thriller titled London Boulevard. In the film, Knightley plays a movie star who, disturbed by fame, has become a virtual recluse. Farrell is the dogsbody, with whom she starts an uneasy relationship.
“Oh he’s lovely. I had never met him before. And it was an absolute joy. We did the Guardian crossword together and then, when that was done, we’d go on to the Times. The simple one. It became a complete obsession.”
She denies that she sees any parallels between herself and the character in London Boulevard, but admits that her recent hiatus was triggered by weariness and professional pressure. Then involved in a long-term relationship with actor Rupert Friend (they split up a few weeks ago), she had, for the first time in her career, begun to fall out of love with the thespian life.
“I consciously took time off. I thought: I have to stop now. I had been talking about it for ages. I was just very tired and not having a great time. I am in such a privileged position and it’s crazy to not be having a good time. It all got a bit much. I wanted to get better and create something interesting. I wanted to get some sleep and some energy back.”
So, having reconnected with the art of leisure, how does she spend an ideal day off? “I sit in a café and watch the world go by. I read a book, watch a good film and drink a bit of wine. That’s the best.”
I’m rather amazed she can read a book in a café without being pestered. Does she have to wear a hat and a false beard? “Oh yeah. That would work. Nobody’s going to spot me if I’m wearing a big beard. Are they? Ha ha ha!”
Take heed, paparazzo. You know what to look out for.
Never Let Me Gois on general release
Would you like to get a little closer to Keira Knightley? She is currently starring in The Children’s Hour by Lillian Hellman in London’s Comedy Theatre. The show runs until late April
