Knightley has earned a reputation for playing the leading lady in period dramas such as ‘Pride & Prejudice’ and ‘Atonement’.

And the #MeToo movement. Knightley said she attended two Time’s Up meetings in the UK, which she found interesting. But she felt slightly out of place.

“They’re amazing women, but I’m, like, ‘Holy [crap], they’re really proactive and organised, and I’m just not,’ “she said. “I mean, why am I frightened about talking about politics? I’m frightened I’ll say the wrong thing. Well, what do I mean by that? What is right, what is wrong? An opinion is an opinion.”

Knightley was a teenager when she first garnered public acclaim in the 2002 football film Bend It Like Beckham, and a year later became a household name after she was cast in the Pirates of the Caribbean.

Meanwhile, Knightley has earned a reputation for playing the leading lady in period dramas such as Pride & Prejudice, which brought her an Oscar nomination in 2006, and Atonement — something she returns to with Colette.

SHE’S NOT NOSTALGIC

She doesn’t know why she’s offered so many period films — “I think I just look good in very big dresses,” she said with a laugh. She isn’t some hopeful time traveller who looks at the past through rose-coloured glasses: “And have pleurisy and die of scarlet fever and have [faeces] rolling down the floor? No, I think the reality of any of those times before public health and women’s right to choose were pretty ... brutal.”

But she tends to find that period films feature more interesting female characters who aren’t just window dressing or exploitation fodder. “A lot of the characters that I’ve been offered — which doesn’t mean that that’s the only characters out there — have either been the wife, the girlfriend or the sexy rape victim,” she said. “I’m all up for a story if it’s really looking at rape and the consequences — but what I felt with some of the stories I was offered was it was purely for titillation.”

Asked if she’s felt an increasing sense of power in the industry as she’s aged, the actress said she’s noticed in the last five years that “people think I’m good at what I do.”

“Whereas before, it was like, ‘She’s just a pretty face and she can’t do that,’” said Knightley, who was nominated for a second Oscar in 2014 for her supporting turn in The Imitation Game.

“There’s been a switch, and I feel quite good about that. There was a moment where it didn’t feel like that was gonna happen.”