Keira Knightley has thought back on the criticism she received at the beginning of her career.
In an interview published on November 23 in The Times, the 39-year-old actor talked candidly about past press criticism. She mentioned that she had to contend with persistent rumors that she suffered from an eating disorder in her early career.
Even though she claimed to be aware that she didn’t have an eating disorder because she “was eating,” the criticism of her appearance was nevertheless very upsetting.
“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 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 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.
“I did take a year off there and was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder because of all of that stuff,” she said with regard 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.”
She talked candidly in March 2023 about how she battled the pressures placed on her after becoming famous at the age of 17.
“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 tomboyish to getting projected as quite the opposite. I felt very constrained. I felt very stuck. So the roles afterward were about trying to break out of that.”
