Keira Knightley says she felt “caged in” after Pirates Of The Caribbean role
Keira Knightley recalled "trying to break out" of similar roles following her breakout performance as Elizabeth Swann in the hit Disney franchise
Aux News Keira Knightley
While Keira Knightley’s breakout role first came about with soccer hit Bend It Like Beckham, the Oscar-nominated actor fully rose to global fame in Disney’s theme park-turned-swashbuckling adventure film Pirates Of The Caribbean: The Curse Of The Black Pearl. Though her portrayal of independent heroine Elizabeth Swann made her a household name in Hollywood, Knightley recalled feeling “very stuck” and “constrained” after the role, as revealed in a recent interview with Harper’s Bazaar UK.
“She was the object of everybody’s lust,” said Knightley, speaking about her character in the Pirates Of The Caribbean franchise. “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.”
She continued, “I felt very constrained. I felt very stuck. So the roles afterward were about trying to break out of that.”
Among those post-2003 roles for Knightley are the 2005 adaptation of Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice and the melancholic Atonement, with the former earning her an Oscar nomination for Best Actress in a Leading Role. Even with the critical and box office success of both projects, Knightley still considered that time period from 2003 to 2008 as “a very tricky five-year window,” to which she felt “quite powerless.”
“I didn’t have a sense of how to articulate it,” said The Imitation Game actor. “It very much felt like I was caged in a thing I didn’t understand.”
Recalling how “incredibly hard” she was on herself during that moment in her career, Knightley still looks back in admiration of her younger self, even though it was an “exhausting way to live.”
“I am in awe of my 22-year-old self, because I’d like a bit more of her back,” Knightley said. “And it’s only by not being like that any longer that I realise how extraordinary it was. But it does have a cost.”
That cost turned out to be burnout, one so extreme that it resulted in the actor being diagnosed with PTSD after facing a mental health crisis at 22-years-old, which Knightley revealed in The Hollywood Reporter’s Award Chatter podcast back in 2018.
After taking some time off, Knightley came back full-force with a slew of roles, including her second Oscar nomination with 2014's The Imitation Game. For her next project, Knightley will take on a serial killer as a reporter uncovering the real-life case in Boston Strangler, which arrives March 13 on Hulu.
24 Comments
It is interesting that neither Orlando Bloom nor Keira Knightley ended up as A-listers after the Pirates movies. They’ve both had fine careers, don’t get me wrong, but having their names on a film doesn’t equate to big box office by any means.
I don’t think it’s interesting that Orlando “black hole of charisma” Bloom isn’t an A-lister. I can’t think of a less interesting, more bland, vanilla actor off the top of my head.
Whereas Johnny Depp is an extremely bankable name who always … okay wait, hold on….
Okay, Geoffrey Rush, he’s a well respected star who has certainly never been implicated in any kind of scandalous … oh, oops.But surely director Gore Verbinkski leveraged the massive success of the first Pirates movie to make a string of all-time classics … like… Rango, and, umm, The Lone Ranger…….Okay, new theory: everyone involved in that movie was cursed by the experience. In that light, Knightley actually looks like the best of them.
Orlando Bloom started out very pretty but he lacks charisma, and has only an average level of acting talent. Once the prettiness faded, post Lord of the Rings, what he didn’t have became a lot more apparent. Knightley has always had talent, looks and charisma, but lacks naturalism – she would have done well in Old Hollywood, but her mannered style seems a bit artificial when placed alongside other modern actors.They were both the worst things in the first Pirates movie, and I can see why they both didn’t have better careers after its success.
After watching Carnival Row, Bloom seems to be at that stage in his career where he can start getting those parts that get offered to Gerard Butler.
I know there are a lot of partisans of the director’s cut of Kingdom of Heaven, which his the only version of it I’ve seen, but that film is fatally saddled with Bloom as the lead.
I really liked Kingdom Of Heaven, but I think I liked it despite Bloom, not because of him.
Bloom even had the one-two combo of Lord of the Rings alongside it. I think that’s kind of the dream, though maybe not for everyone who wants to be an actor: Do a financially successful film or franchise when you’re young to generate enough wealth to support you while you do whatever roles you want from then on. Of course that’s not so easy when, like Knightly and Bloom both, you have sex appeal that Hollywood thinks it can wring out of you. But when faced with the choice of being say, Tom Cruise or John Boyega, I know which I’d choose.
Top heavy, really. Orlando Bloom did a couple HUGE franchises in LOTR and Pirates. Keira Knightly did Pirates and some big Romance films (and sort of Star Wars). But not a ton past 2005.
I’ll bet it was a sexy cage tho. Hummana-hummana!
I’d share a Phantom Zone with her any day.
Ya’ best start believin’ in cages, Ms. Knightley. You’re in one!
Caged in by all that money. Must be horrible.
Reminder that “But did you know celebs have… money?!” is a free square on AV Club Comments Bingo.
Exhausting isn’t it? Don’t get me wrong, there is no denying oodles of cash makes much of life easier. But if money fixed everything, so many famous folks would die by suicide, or drown in addiction. I think it must be a deeply shallow person who says that no wealth or famous person could ever have real problems, or have real pain.
My mom made me sleep in a cage for awhile. It’s not that bad.
Oh god your bony ass is still the object of my lust you limey skank. If you just ate a Bic Mac, I would do so many horrible things to you if I was left alone in a room with you jfc
Oh shut the fuck up. You’d ejac in your little pants if she so much as looked at you.
I’ll ejac in your pants you filth dirty little skank 😘😘😘
You are premature ejaculation in human form.
I’ll keep premature ejaculating in your dirty skank pants you filthy whore slut 🥵🥵🥵🥵🥵
Bye bitch
You’re trying too hard and it’s pathetic.
The only thing too hard is this massive donkey dick in my pants that’s ready to ravage your tight little pussy 🥵🥵🥵🥵