Biography
Few actresses enjoy the kind of success Keira Knightley saw in 2003. First, her major picture starring debut, Pirates Of The Caribbean, entered the all-time Top 20 of box-office hits. Then, due to this success, her earlier low-budget effort, Bend It Like Beckham, already a cult smash, found its release widened dramatically, taking it into undreamed of profit. Following these with Love, Actually, the latest cute rom-com from Richard “Notting Hill†Curtis, her rise in a few short months would be nothing short of phenomenal. And still she was only 18.
Yet, despite her tender years, Knightley already had a fair amount of working experience. Like such American actresses as Kirsten Dunst and Julia Stiles, she had begun her career at an absurdly young age. Unlike them, though, she had not done so through the actions of “pushy†parents. Knightley’s focus was all her own, and had first become apparent at the absurdly young age of 3.
She was born Keira Knightley on the 22nd of March, 1985, in Teddington, south-west London. Her name would become Keira as her Hollywood career took off, the change shamelessly breaking the golden rule of “I before E except after C†but making the name more easily pronounceable on a worldwide basis. Her father was stage actor Will Knightley, who’d make the occasional foray into television, such as starring as Mr Glegg in the BBC’s 1997 production of The Mill On The Floss. Her Ayrshire-born mother, Sharman MacDonald, had also been a stage and TV actress (she once appeared in Shoestring). Having joined the Drama Society at Edinburgh University in 1972, then worked as a go-go dancer to pay her Drama School fees, she’d battled against stage fright for 12 years. Eventually, pregnant with Keira and having borne son Caleb five years earlier (he’d go on to teach music to underprivileged kids), in 1984 she gave up acting and concentrated on her family.
She also took up a career in playwriting and, after debuting with When I Was A Girl I Used To Scream And Shout, she proceeded to deliver such notable efforts as After Juliet, All Things Nice, The Brave, Sea Urchins, Shades and The Winter Guest, the last being taken to the big screen by Alan Rickman. On top of this, she’d write Wild Flowers and The Music Practice for TV, and a BBC documentary would be made about her, called Mindscape and featuring the young Keira.
Most kids like to join in with whatever their parents are up to, and Keira was no exception. At the age of 3, noticing that both Will and Sharman were getting regular calls from their respective agents, the young girl demanded one of her own. She was, of course, politely refused, but was insistent in her requests for the next several years. By the time she was 6, her mother struck a bargain with her. As the child had recently been diagnosed as dyslexic, she said that if Keira came to her every day of the summer holidays and spent an hour working on her reading and maths, she would provide her with professional representation. This challenge was important. Up until this point Keira had been ridiculed by her schoolmates for her supposed stupidity. In fact, her dyslexia meant she couldn’t read words and wrote numbers backwards. It got so bad that she’d get hold of book-tapes and memorise them so that no one would recognise her failings.
To Sharman’s surprise, the child complied and then forced her mother to keep to the bargain. And, to mum’s horror, the new agent did his work well. At age 7, Keira filmed her TV debut, Royal Celebration, concerning the complicated lives and loves in a London square at the time of Prince Charles’ marriage to Diana Spencer and featuring the likes of Kenneth Cranham, Minnie Driver and Rupert Graves.
Fearing their daughter would begin to neglect her schoolwork, Keira’s parents told her she could only pursue her new career during the summer holidays. So, throughout the mid-Nineties, she did just that. 1994 brought a minor role in Joanna Trollope’s controversial drama A Village Affair, featuring a lesbian relationship between Sophie Ward and Kerry Fox. Yet again Keira found herself amidst a heavy-duty cast, including Claire Bloom and Jeremy Northam.
1995 brought Innocent Lies, set in 1938, where an aristocratic family in a small seaside town are suspected of complicity in a murder. Joanna Lumley played the Nazi-supporting matriarch, while daughter Gabrielle Anwar and son Stephen Dorff hid some terrible secret - Keira playing the young Anwar in flashback. The next year saw another period drama in E. Nesbit’s Treasure Seekers where a poor widowered inventor worked on a breakthrough in refrigeration while his five kids tried to help - Keira playing The Princess, a neat presaging of what was soon to come. This time her lofty co-stars included James Wilby, Gina McKee and Ian Richardson.
Meanwhile, Keira’s education continued at Teddington School, a classy and well-funded establishment thats grounds extended to the banks of the Thames, where it had its own slipway for launching boats. With 10 science laboratories, a TV studio and a Music and Drama block it offered great opportunities. Through her early teens Keira would make the most of her spare time, too, attending drama workshops at the nearby Heatham House youth club. This was an extremely forward-looking club, established some 50 years before, where artists, musicians, dramatists and youth workers would teach kids such fun subjects as photography, football, DJing, breakdancing, skateboarding and acting. This was where Keira would gain most of her early acting experience. And, remember, for her this was a normal situation. Unlike the millions who seek instant celebrity by banging out soul-less karaoke on Pop Idol or scoring a part on some wretched soap-opera, Knightley did not equate acting with fame or big bucks. Due to her parents’ efforts and lifestyle, she saw it simply as a job that needed to be learned.
Come 1998, it was back to period drama with Rosamund Pilcher’s TV epic Coming Home. This saw Keira (who was “Introduced†in the credits) as Judith Dunbar, a quiet girl sent to an English boarding school by her parents in the colonies in the 1930s. Here she’s befriended by a rich girl and eventually, due to tragedy in the family, taken in by the girl’s folks, the movie following the lives of the two girls as they suffer class divisions and WW2. The older Judith would be played by Emily Mortimer, who’d fall for her friend’s brother Paul Bettany, the cast also featuring Peter O’Toole and, once again, Joanna Lumley.
While still at Teddington School, Knightley received a most extraordinary offer - to play a handmaiden of Natalie Portman’s Queen Amidala in the forthcoming The Phantom Menace, part one of the Star Wars saga and perhaps the most hotly anticipated movie in history. In fact, as the plot required her to dress as Portman and thus act as a decoy, she would, to all intents and purposes, be appearing AS Queen Amidala. Trouble was, with George Lucas keeping his cards so close to his chest, this plot-twist, and thus Keira’s presence in the movie, was kept absolutely secret. She was, therefore, perhaps the only actress ever to not have her career boosted by a prime role in one of the biggest hits ever.
As said, fame was not really the point for Keira, and her next role was a satisfying one. It came at a good time, too. Upset at school due to a constant breaking up with friends mostly caused by her work, things had got so bad that a week before her 13th birthday her mother had allowed her to have her belly-button pierced - just to cheer her up. What cheered her more, though, was a part in Alan Bleasdale’s adaptation of Oliver Twist, a work that courageously stretched beyond Dickens’ work to enrich the characters and story. Here Keira played the young aunt of Oliver who, along with kindly executor Mr Brownlow, tries to protect the boy from his homicidal half-brother and, of course, the manipulative Fagin.
Now the offers of work were coming in thick and fast. 2001 saw her star in the Disney-backed TV production Princess Of Thieves where she played Gwynn, daughter of Robin Hood and Maid Marian, who, despite her father’s promise to her dying mother, has secretly become an adept at archery and horse-riding. This proves helpful when Robin is imprisoned by the Sheriff of Nottingham (Malcolm McDowell) and attempts are made to assassinate Philip, the rightful heir to the throne. Only Gwynn and her dopey sidekick Froderick (who loves her on the quiet) stand between England and disaster.
It was an endearing romp and her first starring role (though she had headlined Star Wars I in an odd kind of way, as the Queen Amidala doll sold as merchandise had resembled Keira rather than Natalie Portman). It also introduced her to actor Del Synnott who played Froderick and would go on to star in the TV series Lock, Stock And Two Smoking Barrels and play D.S Carter in Murphy’s Law. The couple would still be seeing each other when Knightley struck gold in 2003.
Immediately after Princess Of Thieves came another venture onto the big screen with the Brit horror flick The Hole. Here, alongside Thora Birch, Keira played one of four public schoolkids who are trapped for 2 weeks in a deep cavity originally intended as a bomb shelter. Keira’s character, Frankie, is blonde, charismatic and bitchy, going topless in her more lusty moments (a tad dodgy this as Knightley was only just 16 when the movie was released). And all ends bloodily as The Hole reveals itself to be a cross between The Breakfast Club and Lord Of The Flies, the excellent Embeth Davidtz playing the psychologist who must unravel the truth behind the unholy mess. Though not a hit itself, the movie would bring Keira to the attention of the makers of both Bend It Like Beckham and Dr Zhivago.
Naturally, her education had to continue and, after filming the short Deflation (directed by Roger Ashton-Griffiths, Friar Tuck in Princess Of Thieves, who was assisted by her mother Sharman), Knightley sat for her GCSEs while in the middle of shooting Bend It Like Beckham (is it a sign of falling standards that she still got 6 A-grades?). Soon the schedule would be too much to bear. Having started her A-levels at her local Esher College, where she studied Art, English Literature, History and Classical Civilisations, she dropped out during the first year, in order to take on Gillies MacKinnon’s Pure and the major miniseries Dr Zhivago.
First though came Bend It Like Beckham. Here a young Asian girl dreams of playing football for England but is dissuaded by her disapproving parents. That is, until she’s spotted playing in the park by Keira, a star of semi-pro girls’ team the Hounslow Harriers. So she joins up and begins to live her dream, though there’s trouble when both she and Keira fall for coach Jonathan Rhys-Meyers.
The movie was a real charmer and a major British success. Keira stood out as the tomboy Juliette Paxton, both in the scenes with her mother Juliet Stevenson, who attempts to make her wear a Wonderbra, and in the action sequences. For these she’d trained hard, at points with Simon Clifford, a coach of some renown who’d worked with Manchester United and with a young Michael Owen. Indeed, Clifford claimed that Knightley had picked up some aspects of the game quicker than Owen had (though of course she lacked his searing pace and unscrupulous penalty-winning techniques). The performance would win her the Best Newcomer Award from the London Critics Circle in 2003.
But 2002 wasn’t finished yet. After joining Synnott (who’d also appeared with her in Deflation) with a brief role in the silly comedy Thunderpants, where a grossly flatulent schoolboy is hired by NASA, she moved on to Pure. This saw Molly Parker as a young mother trying to bring up a 10-year-old boy while struggling with heroin addiction on an east London council estate. He’s befriended by Keira, the worldly-wise waitress at the local café who understands his situation but cannot prevent her own slide into addiction and prostitution. Depressing stuff, but well played.
It was time for yet another period drama, this time a “sexed-up†remake of David Lean’s Dr Zhivago. Here Keira took on the role of Lara Antipova, a brave move considering she had to follow the character from the age of 16 to 32, as well as match the original enigmatic performance of Julie Christie. Not easy, given that, amidst the turbulence of the Russian revolution, she must represent Russia itself as she’s abused and pursued by a series of men, including Hans Matheson’s Zhivago and Sam Neill’s Komarovsky. For the second time Keira engaged in on-screen steaminess (the part had actually been turned down by singer Andrea Corr due to the excessive nudity), stating categorically that it was all part of the job.
Heavily advertised, Dr Zhivago was Knightley’s breakthrough in the UK. And she enjoyed the experience throughout. Filming for three months in Slovakia and Prague, she’d had her own flat for the first time and, being as the flat was in the red light area, was pleasantly intrigued by the sleazy freedom of the dirty video shop on the corner, the prostitute who worked the turf outside her window, and the constant sex in the nearby bushes. You don’t get that in Richmond.
She followed Dr Zhivago with three shorts. The first, The Seasons Alter, was an interpretation of Titania’s famous “weather†speech in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, with Keira delivering an extract alongside Cherie Lunghi’s Titania and Lloyd Owen’s Oberon. Then there’d be New Year’s Eve, about a posh party where a fellow chats up Keira, thinking she’s a respectable seventeen, only for trouble to brew when it’s revealed that she’s dangerously younger. Then there was the animated Gaijin, where she performed several roles, one being a British student who, unable to make friends in Tokyo, tries to program her robot to play Japanese music, only for the robot to cause more problems.
Now came Keira’s big year. In 2003’s Pirates Of The Caribbean: The Curse Of The Black Pearl she played Elizabeth Swann, daughter of British governor Jonathan Pryce, who’s kidnapped by Geoffrey Rush, an undead buccaneer needing her blood to find redemption. Pursued by her wannabe lover Orlando Bloom and Johnny Depp’s camp and hilarious Jack Sparrow, she remained feisty to the last, even when walking the plank.
Despite fears that the movie would follow Cutthroat Island down to Davy Jones’ Locker, it performed exceptionally well, quickly rising over the $200 million mark in the US. At the same time, Bend It Like Beckham, taking advantage of Keira’s newfound kudos, had its release widened from 119 veues to 990, its take instantly rising to $28.3 million (not bad on a budget of $4.5 million) with plenty more to come. Keira, who’d turned 18 just after the Pirates shoot ended, was now A-list and a bona fide cover girl. After all, as critic AA Gill had put it, “the camera just licks Knightley’s face like an enraptured dogâ€. Plans would immediately be put in place for Pirates 2.
After Pirates would come Love, Actually, which intertwined ten tales of love, featuring such luminaries as Hugh Grant, Liam Neeson, Laura Linney, and Alan Rickman. Knightley claimed to have been continuously star-struck on-set and, for once acting her age, said she was less impressed by the major league thespians Rickman and Leeson than by former EastEnders actress Martine McCutcheon. There’d be further exposure when she became the new face of both luxury goods firm Asprey and the British Dyslexia Association.
After this, it was off to Ireland to play Guinevere opposite Clive Owen’s titular regent in King Arthur, like Pirates a Jerry Bruckheimer production. This would claim to be more of a historical document than another stab at the Arthurian myth, with Arthur as a Roman general at the time of the Empire’s downfall. Well, Hollywood knows best. Keira’s Guinevere would be a member of British royalty, a woad-smeared warrior princess who joins forces with Arthur against the invading Saxon hordes.
Keira’s next project was to have been Tulip Fever, with Tom Stoppard adapting Deborah Moggach’s novel of the crazy “tulip bubble†of 17th Century Amsterdam, Keira starring alongside Jude Law and Jim Broadbent. However, Chancellor Gordon Brown saw fit to cancel tax breaks available to British film-makers, throwing many projects into disarray, including Tulip Fever. Instead, Keira moved on to a Steven Soderbergh production, The Jacket, where Oscar-winner Adrien Brody played a Gulf War veteran charged with murder and locked in a mental institution awaiting execution. In here, like the hero in Slaughterhouse 5, he comes adrift in time, his jacket serving as a transporter. Now he travels through the past and tries to change events leading to the murder while at the same time seeking the woman of his dreams, someone he’s met only once, when she was just a child, and who bears a striking resemblance to Keira, the only hospital worker who will help him. Originally planned as a mainstream thriller, The Jacket would have its budget reduced and be made as an art-house movie - and was all the darker and better for that.
Having missed out on Tulip Fever, Keira now found herself speaking the words of Deborah Moggach anyway, when the writer co-wrote the screenplay of her next project, a re-adaptation of Jane Austen’s Pride And Prejudice. This saw Keira in the key role of Elizabeth Bennet, one of five sisters hoping to marry above their station and enduring all manner of misunderstanding and social intrigue. Matthew MacFadyen would play her D’Arcy. In real life, her D’Arcy had changed at the end of 2003 when, her relationship with Del Synott over, she took up with Irish model Jamie Dornan.
Pride and Prejudice proved to be far more than just another Jane Austen adaptation. Not only did it make money in the States, it also saw Keira, her performance described by uber-critic Roger Ebert as “light and yet fierceâ€, nominated for both an Oscar and a Golden Globe. It would also, eventually, bring Knightley a new beau as, having broken up with Jamie Dornan (who’d just scored his first acting role in Sophia Coppola’s Marie Antionette), he took up with Rupert Friend, who’d played Mr Wickham.
Following hot on the heels of Pride and Prejudice would come a very different proposition in Domino, where she’d play the title role of Domino Harvey, daughter of the actor Laurence Harvey, who rebelled against her privileged background and left a career in modelling to become an LA bounty hunter. Directed by Tony Scott, the movie would be very grungey, slipping (maybe) between fantasy and reality, and Knightley would be tested by a role that required her to be almost continuously angry.
Any further career expansion would be put on temporary hold as she now filmed two sequels for Pirates Of The Caribbean back to back, the first seeing Depp’s Jack Sparrow attempting to save the soul he’s bargained away with Davey Jones and his phantom crew, the second having Knightley kidnapped by Chow Yun-Fat’s wicked corsair. While filming took place all we’d see of Knightley were tasteful nude shots as she posed alongside Scarlett Johansson for the cover of Vanity Fair. But 2007 would see her find a meatier role in Silk, based on the novel by Alessandro Baricco. Here a 19th Century French silk merchant would travel to Japan, seeking silkworms to replace those killed by an epidemic in his own country. While there, though, he falls for the sultry concubine of a rich Japanese baron, an absolutely forbidden love, leading his wife Keira, a resourceful and passionate woman, to plot rather shocking ways of both feeding and destroying his new obsession. In all senses, it would be an erotic epic.
Her second literary adaptation of 2007 would be Atonement, written by Ian McEwan with a screenplay by Christopher Hampton. Directed by her Pride And Prejudice helmsman Joe Wright, this concerned a gathering at a country manor in 1935 where Knightley would play the educated elder daughter of a nouveau riche family who’s worried about her increasingly awkward relationship with the son of the family’s cleaning lady. Disaster strikes as her younger sister tells a destructive lie, bonds are shattered and eventually war intervenes, the film dramatically exploring the power of truth, lies and memory.
Knightley was certain to stay hot for some years to come. It had been an extraordinary success story. This kid with no formal training had suddenly conquered Hollywood. Her films had made money, Pride And Prejudice had earned her the Academy’s respect, and she STILL wasn’t even 21. Absurd.