Keira is on our radar!
Keira Knightley is back. The English beauty has been busy making more movies that we are excited to see! In the film Colette which is based on a true story that’s already getting Oscar buzz, Keira plays Colette a woman pushed by her husband to write novels under his name. She’s also playing the Sugar Plum Fairy in The Nutcracker and the Four Realms film based on the famous ballet. And also, the trailer for her movie The Aftermath has caused a session online! The Aftermath is a film set in Post-world War II, where a British colonel and his wife are assigned to live in Hamburg during the post-war reconstruction, but tensions arise with the German who previously owned the house and a possible love affair ensues! We wanted to know more about the actress behind some of the greatest films from the last ten years and here’s what we found out!
Keira Christina Knightley was born on March 26, 1985 in London, UK to Sharman Macdonald and William Knightley. Keira’s mother is a Scottish playwright, screenwriter, and actress, while her father is an English television and stage actor so it’s no surprise that Keira ended up as an actress – in fact, she was demanding an agent at the age of three! Also, she was supposed to be named “Kira” (without the “e”), after the Russian figure skater Kira Ivanova. But when her mother misspelled the name on her birth certificate, it ended up as “Keira.”
At the age of six, Keira was diagnosed with both ADHD and dyslexia. She’s still a slow reader today and cannot read out loud but managed to get over her dyslexia by the age of eleven. By then, she’d already started acting! She had her first agent at the age of six, appeared in several commercials, had multiple small television roles and her first on-screen role was in the 1993 made-for-tv film Royal Celebration. Keira is an incredibly dedicated actress - in her first major role in Disney’s 2001 Princess of Thieves Keira played Gwyn, the daughter of Robin Hood and Maid Marian. To prepare for the role, she trained for weeks in archery, horseback riding, and fencing.
Keira’s hardcore preparation for her film roles didn’t stop there. For her role in 2002’s Bend It Like Beckham,
Keira, along with her co-star Parminder Nagra, trained extensively for three months with English soccer coach Simon Clifford. Bend It Like Beckham was a huge hit in the UK and the US and got Keira considerable notice. The following year, Keira was cast as Elizabeth Swann in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl.
The big budget, Hollywood adventure flick, co-starring Orlando Bloom and Johnny Depp, became a huge franchise and made her a household name around the world.
In 2006, Keira received an Academy Award nomination for her portrayal of Elizabeth Bennet in 2005’s Pride & Prejudice alongside Matthew Macfadyen as Mr Darcy and directed by Joe Wright. At just 20 years old, she was the fifth youngest actress in Oscar history to receive this honor and it’s no surprise when you see the maturity and emotional depth Keira‘s performance had on screen to a role that is seeped in the hearts and minds of many who are fans of the original BBC mini series starring Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle. Keira was nominated again in 2015 for Best Supporting Actress in The Imitation Game.
Keira began dating English musician James Righton in February 2011. James is a member of the incredibly popular indie rock band the Klaxons. After two years of dating, they got married on May 4, 2013, in France. We love that it was a small private wedding ceremony with just 11 guests in the town hall of Mazan, a commune near Marseilles. Three years after their wedding, Knightley gave birth to her first child, Edie, on May 26, 2015. Keira recently stated that she doesn’t let her daughter watch many Disney classic animated films such as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and The Little Mermaid because their messaging doesn’t align with her feminist ideals.