Knightley is not ‘Silent’ about need to get out, go big
A recent bout with COVID-19 took away Keira Knightley’s smell, but not her storytelling sensibilities. h Four-letter words and excited laughter pepper the star’s tale of how she signed on for “Silent Night,” the holiday-oriented polar opposite of “Love Actually,” when she was in the later stages of “one hell of a pregnancy.” h Camille Griffin’s new Christmas doomsday horror dramedy (now in theaters and streaming on AMC+) centers on a British couple (Knightley and Matthew Goode) with three children who invite old college friends to their English countryside estate for a prosecco-fueled evening of revelry, bickering and preparing for an environmental apocalypse.
In 2019, an “incredibly pregnant”
Knightley first read the screenplay while “really cross” dealing with sciatica, but found it “the most hilarious thing.” (Her agents had sent “Silent Night” to her with a note: “You might really hate this. So if you do, we’re really sorry, but don’t fire us.
We kind of think this is amazing.”)
She had the same reaction six weeks after daughter Delilah was born, when “I was super-hormonal.”
Then, when Knightley went to film it when Delilah was 5 months old,
“suddenly I went, ‘This is the most
(messed-up) thing I’ve ever read in my life!’”
The actress, 36, kept up her spirits through a 10-day isolation last month after her family – including her husband, musician James Righton, and daughters Edie, 6, and Delilah, 2 – all tested positive for COVID-19, even though Knightley and Righton are vaccinated.
“We’re all fine,” says Knightley, whose spouse was asymptomatic. “I’ve got a kid who’s still in nappies, so there’s definite positives to not having a sense of smell.”
While one parenting lesson she’s learned during the pandemic is that “sometimes it’s good to have a day where you’re just sitting on the floor