I tend to think that Keira Knightley has changed a lot over the past few years. She used to be a grumpy little thing, very serious, very morose, bordering on humorless in interviews. But for the past few years, the grumpy fog has lifted and she’s been so much more charming, open and lovely. Perhaps the reason for that is her husband James Righton? They seem like a good match, and it seemed to get serious very quickly. And now that she’s a married lady, she just seems… lighter. Anyway, Keira has a charming and curse-filled new interview with The Telegraph. You can read the full piece here, and here are some highlights:

She loves watching football on the telly: “Football is basically the reason I got a television. I didn’t have one before, because I didn’t know where I was going to be, so there was no point. And I got hounded by the TV licence people. I’m like, ‘I don’t have a f- TV licence because I don’t have a TV! Please come in and see that I don’t have one!’ But now I have one because it was getting ridiculous watching football on the laptop. Oh, and I love Masterchef. It makes me cry. Oh my God, it’s just so f- emotional. It means so much to them. I get to the end and I weep. I just f- love it.”

Life as a child actor: “I’m dyslexic and obviously I found reading and writing really difficult. When [my parents] found out I wanted to act they used it as a carrot to dangle in front of me. If I kept up my grades at school, I’d be allowed to go up for auditions.”

Director Joe Wright told her to stop pouting: “He allowed me a little bit in Atonement, because the character was kind of an ice queen, and I was allowed in Anna Karenina because she’s a vain beast, but certainly not in Pride & Prejudice.” He does allow her in the Coco Mademoiselle ad campaigns, in which he directs her (they have just completed their third). “Oh yeah, he definitely lets me pout a lot in those. But that’s the great thing about shooting with Joe – we have shorthand. I know what he likes and vice versa.”

Her Chanel wedding dress: Last summer she married James Righton of the indie band The Klaxons. She wore a Chanel dress (of course) that she already owned. “Karl [Lagerfeld] very kindly designed me a jacket to go with it. I’d worn the dress lots. It was my something old. And I liked not making a big deal about it. I just wanted to be in something I had had a great time in, something I would have a great time in again. It’s now got red wine spilled down the front because the last time I wore it my friend went like this” – she juts out her elbows – “and now it’s everywhere. I didn’t quite realise the extent of it until I got home. It’s quite impressively splattered. But, hey, a good night is a good night and when a dress has had its time, maybe it’s had its time. I’m pretty sure I can get it out but, if I can’t, I’m happy with the memory of a good night and the story of how the dress got destroyed.”

She lives in London but she loves Paris: “I really love Paris. It took me years to get my head around it but now I’ve found all these little pockets. It’s also a city that I’ve been on my own in quite a lot, but here you can be a woman on your own, walking around, eating alone, and not feel threatened. I love that about a city. I love that here I feel incredibly private and protected. There are privacy laws. Which doesn’t stop photographers always, but it does at least give you a legal right to say, ‘Don’t follow me.'”

Her current style must-haves: “I love dungarees. I’m a massive fan of them. I wear the dungarees so much that I’ve now got three pairs, because it was getting to the point where I was like, ‘You have to wash them, Keira.’ And I’m really into Doc Martens at the moment. I think I’ve decided to become my eight-year-old self again, because when I was eight that was all that I wore – dungarees and Doc Martens.”

[From The Telegraph]

I love the wedding dress stuff – we talked about how she repurposed her favorite Chanel party dress for her wedding, then repurposed it again with a sheer leotard-thing for a charity event in London last year. I kind of love that she didn’t ask Karl Lagerfeld to make some crazy, only-wear-it-once gown for her wedding, that she just went with a dress she loved and she was fine with re-wearing it after the wedding.

Also: in Brit-speak, dungarees are overalls, right? I had to look it up, because this whole time I thought “dungarees” in Brit-speak meant “khakis”. But they are jean overalls, or as we say in the South, bibs.

Photos courtesy of WENN.