Smearer Knightley! Keira has a lark in the mud
KEIRA Knightley wallowed in mud, glorious mud during a baking hot holiday on a volcanic isle off the coast of Italy yesterday.
But the 33-year-old Love Actually and Pirates Of The Caribbean star emerged from the black lagoon sparkling clean after she and husband James Righton got down and dirty.
They were at the Specchio di Venere – Mirror of Venus – a heart-shaped lake in an extinct volcanic crater on the island of Pantelleria.
Designer Giorgio Armani has a holiday home on the island between Sicily and Tunisia, where tourists are attracted to the island’s mineral-rich mud which they slather on at the shore, then swim out and return clean and with soft skin.
Keira, who gave birth to the couple’s daughter Edie in May 2015, was happy to be seen in a bikini on the beach. After the birth she said she had been surprised at the confidence she felt about her new shape.
She said: “It’s a different body, as it should be, because it’s done an extraordinary thing.
“I thought I was going to go, ‘God, I’ve got to get back into shape’. I actually went completely the opposite. I went, ‘I’m not putting that pressure on myself in any way’. So it’s taken me a long time to get back into my jeans.” The actress has spoken out in the past, saying how lucky she is to be able to afford the quality childcare which makes so much possible.
Keira said: “One of the things that is so shocking is that childcare is unbelievably expensive.
“It should be, it’s an amazing thing if you’re good at it. It’s incredibly difficult. But there is no option for a woman to go back to work unless she’s being paid really, really well.
“I think I’ve become unbelievably aware of that and how lucky I’ve been to be able to afford really good childcare, because otherwise it would be at least four years out of my career.”
Keira also praised musician James, 34, who became famous with the band Klaxons, for being “incredibly supportive”.
She has said paternity leave should equal maternity breaks and warned employers would discriminate against women if it was not made mandatory.
She said: “When you’re thinking about an employer looking at a man and a woman thinking, ‘Well, at some point you could take nine months or however long off, and the guy doesn’t have to’.
“Don’t tell me that that doesn’t come into it.
“You need to be a family unit, not just have the guy there for two weeks, then go back to work and the mother is left desperately trying to figure it out.”