Keira Knightley has been doing a lot of interviews lately because she’s got two films, Laggies and The Imitation Game, coming out soon. Personally, I’m enjoying this current era of Keira’s life. She seems very happy, almost silly-happy, and her interviews reflect that. Keira did a decent interview with The Guardian this weekend – you can read the full piece here. Keira talks a lot about her evolution through her 20s (she’s only 29 now) and how she woke up on 25th birthday and decided to stop taking everything so seriously. Some highlights:
Her 25th birthday: “Up to 25, I was pretty neurotic. It absolutely was [that sudden]. It was my 25th birthday. I remember it so clearly. I suddenly woke up at 25 and was like…” she pulls a face – “It’s all OK. We went bowling. We had a really silly party with karaoke, which I hate, and loads of balloons. And it was just excellent. Lots of cupcakes. Lots of booze. And suddenly there was just that dawning…And that’s what’s happened since. It was exactly the right way to go.”
She still loves Bend It Like Beckham: “I think the great thing about Bend It Like Beckham was that it managed to be amazingly optimistic without making you feel you’ve been raped by sugar. And I’d love to find that again.”
Being critcized: “Who gives a sh-t? My attitude now is that some people will enjoy it and some people won’t.” She shrugs. “Just make it for the people who enjoy it.”
She disliked being part of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise: “That period of being 17, 18, 19, 21… I just found it all very hard. And the thing is, I do love big blockbuster films. I love eating popcorn and watching, because it’s like a ride, and it can be fantastic. The Batman films are absolutely incredible. But it’s secretly always got the other side to it, which is: ‘Well, they’re not really acting, and that’s sh-t, and it’s all about the CGI.’ Which is completely fair enough.”
The paparazzi: She didn’t participate in the Leveson inquiry. “And I have to say, I don’t have a problem now. They’ve completely left me alone, so I have absolutely nothing to complain about. It’s all very lovely and low key, which is the way I like it.”
She’s a tomboy? “Ha ha! My mum had to tell me to take off my dungarees before coming here. But I also think that maybe being a tomboy makes me quite interested in heightened femininity. There’s definitely a contradiction there.”
She loves Scarlett O’Hara: “Oh I loved Gone with the Wind. I absolutely did. But really I loved Scarlett O’Hara, because, specifically, she is a bitch. She does things her own way and everybody’s terrified of her, but she lives like a f–king survivor. And everyone wants to be that. It’s that moral ambiguity which I think is truer to life. That sometimes we can be a little bit mean.”
She talks about her husband, James Righton, a bit too, basically saying that she’s thinking about babies but it doesn’t sound like that’s on her agenda for the next year or so. She also says they stay in most of the time, learning how to cook and reading. I didn’t really understand what she was saying about being a tomboy interested in “heightened femininity” at all. I mean… I always think of Keira as a girly-girl. She loves clothes, she seems to love styling, hair and makeup and if you’ve seen her in interviews, she is very girly. Just because you like to wear pants, that doesn’t mean you’re a tomboy!
Oh, and this was just announced – Keira will make her Broadway debut in a production of Therese Raquin.
Photos courtesy of WENN.
But she said “raped by candy”!! Isn’t using that word an automatic reason to hate someone?
Do you also hate people who say something is “killing” them when they’re not actually being murdered? Or that they’re starving when they’re only a bit hungry?
Do you hate Alexander Pope because he wrote “The Rape of the Lock”?
CoR – I read Ollyholly as being sarcastic.
Ollyholly – if I confess that I laughed out loud (not keen on cheese/saccharine stuff) when I read that remark of hers, do I have to go and sit on the naughty step?!
I hate the use of that expression in a casual way. I don’t hate people “automatically” for saying something stupid, though. I just hope they see that it’s inappropriate and insensitive.
Exactly!
Do you also object to casual use of words like “murder” and “kill” or is there something special about “rape”? And if so, why?
CoR ~
I have no logical reason for being more offended by the use “rape” in a casual way than the other expressions you gave. I have even said “that was murder” before, I’m sure. I suppose I’m just used it, as people have said that since I was a child, and people have only started to use expression like “rape scream” or “raped by candy” fairly recently. It comes at a time when women are trying very hard to change our awareness of the violence against women, and that is something very close to my heart, so trying to be funny by comparing something to rape just jars me. Should I be offended by “it’s killing me”? Maybe. But just because we are accustomed to one or two insensitive expressions isn’t a very good reason to excuse new ones or not to change really old ones, such as “retarded” when people say they are hurt by them. And yes, I realize my answer wasn’t a very good one. Everything can’t be explained by logic – it just offends me in my heart, and it’s not an expression I would use.
I can really see where Good Names is coming from. For years women have been belittled, ignored and frequently suffered further abuse from a justice system where the investigation of rape by the police and law courts can be as much as a violation as the rape itself. It has been a monumental struggle to get the authorities to take rape seriously and even now is a struggle to encourage women to report rape leaving it one of the most under reported crimes. Now when people use the word casually it feel emotionally like another violation, as if the issue still isn’t being taken seriously and I too find that really offensive.
She’s beautiful, but is she really 29?! That doesn’t seem possible.
I always that she was older. I’ve always found her to be very pretty.
In Britain all birth records are public. If you look her up on search.findmypast.co.uk you’ll find that she was born in 1985.
She’s so gorgeous. It must have been hard to deal with the crazy press and stress of Pirates at such a young age. She’s come out very well from it all.
She doesn’t seem very bright or deep to me. I think she’s well- meaning enough, and very pretty, but she sort of “skims” through life, if you can tell that much about a person from an interview.
GWTH was not the invention of the “happy darky” but certainly perpetuated this myth of slaves who were well treated and perfectly content with their lot in life. Margaret Mitchell was extremely prejudiced and her characters were all stereotypes, black and white. MM was also a snob. Scarlett O’Hara’s father was not a “real” gentleman. He was an Irish immigrant who made a small fortune and married far “above” himself when he married a “purebred” lady. This theme runs all the way through the book, especially when comparing Ashley’s two loves – Scarlett (not a true lady) and Melanie (pure bred/ true lady) and their methods of coping with hardship. Melanie remains a lady even when she is wearing rags and poor, while Scarlett doesn’t feel like a lady unless she has money. She resorts to selling herself in marriage and offering to prostitute herself for the money to pay the taxes on her plantation. She does cruel and unethical things like hire an overseer for her business who beats and starves her workers. She is a terrible mother and doesn’t love but one of her three children, and only loves her because she’s beautiful, like Scarlett herself. And she is “punished” in the end by losing the one man who has ever truly loved her. So I think Keira’s assessment of the situation is that of a skimmer.
I wonder about the sudden fascination with the “romance” of that period by young women while completely ignoring the brutal realities of slavery, the ugliness phase of our history.
I love GWTW. No, it isn’t a utopian politically correct work. Few books are. I agree with Keira on this. The main crux is that Scarlett thinks, behaves and survives “like a man” in a period of time when that idea would’ve been abhorrent. She’s an extremely flawed character,and yet, as a strong female I identify with her. If I only read things that were balanced and completely without offense I would never read anything.
😉
I would also add that I don’t think Scarlett loved her child with Rhett more because she was beautiful. It was because she recognized herself in that child’s strong will and stubbornness.
Yes, I agree that she loved Bonnie because she reminded her of herself. That’s fair. But it doesn’t change the fact that she didn’t love her other two children. She was a bad mother to them.
I agree with your point about Scarlett surviving “like a man.” But that’s our modern interpretation of it. That wasn’t the author’s point at all. She saw Scarlett’s strengths as proof of her being a “half-breed,” of not being a true “lady” and she was punished for it. She gained materially, but lost emotionally. At the end of the book, she has nothing, except Tara. Her love for Ashley was a delusion and Rhett hates her and pities her. She’s empty. Which is what you get for being “like a man,” according to MM.
I don’t blame her for loving GWTW. I just disagree with the characterization of Scarlett as someone “we all want to be.” We may want her strengths, but I doubt anyone wants her blindness or cruelty.
GNAT- what makes you think that was the author’s point? I’ve never heard that MM made those statements. I’ve definitely read where she has said the book is about those who survive and those who don’t and what qualities those people possess. I’ve also read that MM was quite feminist, especially considering when and where she grew up. Also that she still struggled with the conformity of women in southern society, much like Scarlett.
I’m not arguing that Scarlett was a saint with no flaws, quite the opposite really. I think she was torn between what she was and what she thought she ought to be, and when the war came on I think there was sort of an arrested development going on, and her survival instincts took over. She’s the classic tragic hero. I don’t know that everyone wants to be like her. I find her to be fascinating, because she’s simply not black and white. She envelops that grey area that most people live in.
Scarlett has three children? I’ve seen the film many times and read the book years and years ago, but I only remember her having one child, her daughter Bonnie.
She had 3 husbands and a child by each. The first was a boy, the second a girl. In the movie, they left out her other two children.
Really? Like I say, I read the book but I was only about 11 at the time so have forgotten the details. Did her other two children survive? Were they both boys?
She had a boy with Charles, her first husband. I believe he was named Charles, too. He was timid and scared of everything, so he got on her nerves. She had a daughter with her second husband, Frank, and I’ve forgotten her name – Louisa, maybe? She looked like Frank, and wasn’t pretty and was very whiny, so Scarlett found her dull and uninteresting. As far as I recall, they both lived, but they sort of drop out of the story after it is made clear that Rhett is really sweet to them and feels bad for them because Scarlett completely ignores them.
The girl was Ella. Yes, they did away with the children in the movie.
I got the impression that she meant the movie, not the book. Because it’s easier to want to be the kind of woman movie Scarlett is portrayed as: young, beautiful, fiery, has men falling all over her, hardens through losing husbands and living in a war ravaged area. She remained the same vain, selfish woman throughout the movie, but it was sold as her doing what she had to do to survive. Plus, the movie left out some of her more, shall we say, sociopathic traits.
Why do you never hear women saying “I’d like to be like Jo March”? Is it that she was plain, or somehow boring? She was still feisty, she still had a man who just wanted her for her, she did some pretty feminist things for that era, like leaving home and becoming a paid writer. She didn’t necessarily benefit from the more feminine pursuits available to someone of her social position. So, why not Jo?
Excellent point. I bet you’re right that she has only seen the movie. I’ve read the book and seen the movie, so it’s a little hard for me to separate the two in my mind.
Also interesting about Jo March. She was really quite ahead of her time. She could have married very well and she chose to pursue her dream of writing.
I’m quite a fan of Jo March. Again, I don’t think people want to BE Scarlett. She’s simply a fascinating character study.
Keira has really grown on me lately. Her red carpert style is always on point and her acting has improved over the years. Go, Keira!!!
(I hope she gets an Oscar nom so I can see what she will wear. Superficial much, right?)
I always liked Keira but bitch please, you’re not a tomboy. There seems to be a preponderance of women who think being “girly” is a negative thing, that it automatically makes them weak/submissive/high maintenance, so they try to remove themselves from that label. Maybe once you take her out the spotlight she isn’t “girly”, but she is definitely feminine.
Yeah, it’s all very easy for a slim, beautiful Chanel model to boast of being a ‘tomboy’, isn’t it?
And while Keira comes across as a nice person – even if maybe not as clever as she seems to think she is – she’s a horrible actress. I wish directors wouldn’t automatically cast her in any high profile British film, because she has a track record of ruining them.
I like Keira, but there has always been a tiny bit of try-hard about her that’s made me rolled my eyes when she does her interviews. She’s lost a lot of the arrogance as she aged (as do most of us), but it crops up time to time. The one that takes the cake for me was when she went on and on about how she totally doesn’t exercise and eat right…after she dropped the “weight” post-PotC and showed up on the red carpet super slim with contoured abs. (Weight that she totally didn’t need to lose, and that I felt has given her a slightly gaunt look that ages her.) It was a very, “Bitch please” celebrity moment.
Haha, yeah “try hard” is the term I was searching for, thank you! To be fair, that happened to me… Over the course of a year I became dreadfully thin from carelessness, not exercising included. But for me not eating right also entails forgetting to eat/can’t be bothered to cook so maybe that’s where she was coming from too. When I become that thin my abs are visible since there’s less body fat covering them, it certainly isn’t from working out.
I have always found her beautiful but her cheeks seem a bit different. It almost looks like she has messer with her face a little. Does anyone else see this?
yeah it almost looks like cheek implants.
I thought Keira was good in Bend it like Beckham, a movie I still like. She was wonderful in Pride and Prejudice, a movie version that I think is still woefully underrated. One reason she got the latter part is the tomboy in her, and even now I think I can see her as a tomboy, despite the glamor that usually surrounds her.
I guess I always thought of her as a tomboy because just about every picture I saw of her for a year had her in realllly unflattering overalls. So I never thought she was particularly girly-ish. I mean they weren’t PINK overalls.
I look very girly and enjoy girly things but I get along much better with men than woman, prefer more “manly” activities like being outdoors and sports, am not afraid to get dirty, and have been told by others many times that I have a very male way of thinking. Physically I’m girl, but mentally I’m a tomboy. I think Keira is the same.