For actress Keira Knightley, great commercial and critical success seemed to have come too early as she starred in blockbusters such as the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, as well as acclaimed dramas like Pride and Prejudice. She has been nominated twice for the Academy Awards and has been honored to play the protagonist in two Jane Austen novel adaptations.
However, Knightley mentioned that her quick success and publicity during the formative years of her career have made her thick-skinned, which has made her brave all the criticisms that have been thrown at her.
Keira Knightley’s Rise To Stardom
Actress Keira Knightley had an unusually small road to stardom, although it has only been harder since. She comes from a family of dramatists and she famously demanded an agent for herself at the age of three. She was signed on at the age of six and appeared in many TV dramas and theater productions.
Her first major Hollywood role came in the form of the character Sabé, the handmaiden of Natalie Portman’s Padmé in Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace. She was cast as she looked similar to Portman. Knightley had her breakthrough in the sports comedy Bend It Like Beckham, which propelled her to international stardom. The film was a massive success as it earned over $76 million against a modest $5 million budget.
Soon after Knightley was cast as lead actress in Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, where she played the role of Elizabeth Swann. She was paired with Orlando Bloom’s Will Turner and also starred alongside Johnny Depp’s Captain Jack Sparrow. The film was a blockbuster and spawned multiple sequels. Knightley appeared in three more films of the franchise.
Keira Knightley then starred in Joe Wright’s adaptation of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice for which she was nominated for Best Actress for both the Oscars and the Golden Globes. She did all this by the age of 25.
Keira Knightley Faced Harsh Criticisms
With her tremendous success at such a young age, actress Keira Knightley also received her share of extreme criticism from the media. She has reportedly been called annoying and has been criticized for her candor and attitude. She has also been accused of being ‘too pretty to be worthy of her success’. These criticisms reportedly affected the actress, who became more defensive as they mounted.
However, Knightley has since taken these criticisms sportingly and has addressed them. In an interview with The Guardian, she mentioned how being in the public eye at such a young age made her stronger and how the formative years of her career being outside a protected environment have made her more thick-skinned.
Talking about the polarized views of the media on her, she said,
“The criticism was tough. At school, I’d always been good at things. And drama was always something I’d been good at. I was picked for good parts in the school plays and you form a sense of yourself from that. And then all of a sudden people are saying: ‘No, you’re s*it. You don’t know what you’re doing.’ It’s a strange jolt in how you see yourself and how you connect to the thing that you love…It’s really annoying, let’s face it. ‘F*ck off, you little s*it.’ I do totally get it.”
While Keira Knightley has acknowledged the criticisms, she has since worked on many acclaimed and non-mainstream films that have shown her versatility as an actress.
Source: The Guardian
