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Keira Knightley has reflected on the scrutiny she faced during her early days in the spotlight.
The 39-year-old actor opened up about being previously criticized by the press during an interview with The Times, published on November 23. She noted that during her early career, she dealt with constant speculation that she had an eating disorder.
While she said she knew she wasn’t dealing with an eating disorder, since she “was eating,” the scrutiny about her appearance was still extremely hurtful.
“In that classic trauma way I don’t remember it,” she recalled to the publication. “There’s been a complete delete, and then some things will come up and I’ll suddenly have a very bodily memory of it because, ultimately, it’s public shaming, isn’t it? It’s obviously part of my psyche, given how young I was when it happened. I’ve been made around.”
Knightley explained that back in the early 2000s, mental health wasn’t discussed as openly as it is now. She also recalled the immense criticism celebrities received then, referring to how Mary-Kate Olsen was mocked after she entered rehab for her eating disorder in 2004.
“I remember viscerally one of the Olsen twins had anorexia, and she went into a clinic,” the Pride & Prejudice star said. “I remember being asked about it on a press tour, like it was a joke. She was meant to be shamed for seeking help for anorexia. I remember sitting there just being like, ‘Wow, this is wild.’”
“Can you imagine?” she added. “That made me really emotional. That’s not even about me, it’s about her. I still can’t bear it.”
However, she noted that she was criticized by the press in her twenties, she had a wonderful support system. “The unbelievably lucky thing was I come from an incredibly loving background and I always had really nice boyfriends. I had lovely, lovely boyfriends,” Knightley explained.
In October 2018, the actor first revealed that she had a “mental breakdown” at the age of 22, shortly after she found worldwide fame following roles in Bend It Like Beckham, Pirates of the Caribbean, and Love Actually.
“I did take a year off there and was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder because of all of that stuff,” she said with regards to the pressures of her early success. “I felt pretty much like actually I didn’t exist and I was this weird creature with this weird face that people seemed to respond to in quite an extreme way, and I couldn’t quite figure any of it out.”
In March 2023, she opened up about rising to fame at age 17 and how she struggled with the expectations put on her.
“I had quite an entrance into adult life, an extreme landing because of the experience of fame at a very early age,” she told Harper’s Bazaar UK. “There’s a funny place where women are meant to sit, publicly, and I never felt comfortable with that. It was a big jolt.”
She felt like she “was being judged on what” she was working on, specifically when she was on Pirates of the Caribbean.
“She was the object of everybody’s lust,” Knightley explained. “Not that she doesn’t have a lot of fight in her. But it was interesting coming from being really tomboyish to getting projected as quite the opposite. I felt very constrained. I felt very stuck. So the roles afterwards were about trying to break out of that.”
