Keira Knightley has spoken out in regards to the intimidation and intrusion she skilled firstly of her profession, when she was “stalked by males” who blamed her for his or her aggressive curiosity.
Talking to the Los Angeles Instances, Knightley mentioned that at the same time as a younger lady, “I used to be very clear on it being completely stunning. There was an quantity of gaslighting to be informed by a load of males that ‘you needed this.’ It was rape communicate. , ‘That is what you deserve.’ It was a really violent, misogynistic environment.”
Knightley rose to prominence aged 17 together with her function in Bend It Like Beckham, earlier than discovering worldwide fame with the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise and Love Truly.
“It’s very brutal to have your privateness taken away in your teenage years, early 20s, and to be put beneath that scrutiny at some extent if you end up nonetheless rising,” Knightley mentioned.
“Having mentioned that, I wouldn’t have the monetary stability or the profession that I do now with out that interval. I had a five-year interval between the age of 17 and 21-ish, and I’m by no means going to have that sort of success once more. It completely set me up for all times. Did it come at a price? Sure, it did. It got here at a giant value.”
The actor mentioned that her “jaw dropped on the time” over how she was handled in public areas, with the clear implication that “they very particularly meant I needed to be stalked by males. Whether or not that was stalking as a result of any individual was mentally ailing, or as a result of individuals have been incomes cash from it – it felt the identical to me. It was a brutal time to be a younger lady within the public eye.”
Knightley, who has two daughters, mentioned she believes the web has exacerbated the issue. “Social media has put that in a complete different context, whenever you take a look at the injury that’s been finished to younger ladies, to teenage ladies,” she mentioned. “Finally, that’s what fame is – it’s being publicly shamed. A number of teenage ladies don’t survive that.”
In an interview with the Instances of London final month, Knightley mentioned that the recognition of the Pirates movies put her in a troublesome place: financially steady, however emotionally besieged.
“It’s a humorous factor when you’ve gotten one thing that was making and breaking you on the similar time,” Knightley mentioned. “I used to be seen as shit due to them, and but as a result of they did so effectively I used to be given the chance to do the movies that I ended up getting Oscar nominations for.
“They have been probably the most profitable movies I’ll ever be part of, and so they have been the rationale that I used to be taken down publicly. So that they’re a really confused place in my head.”
Six years in the past, Knightley informed the Hollywood Reporter that such publicity led her to have a breakdown aged 22. She didn’t go away the home for 3 months and wanted hypnotherapy to really feel capable of stroll the Baftas pink carpet for Atonement in 2008.
In 2018, Knightley wrote an essay, The Weaker Intercourse, which addressed how express and internalised misogyny silences ladies. It ended with a broadside towards male colleagues:
“Inform me what it’s to be a girl. Be good, be supportive, be fairly however not too fairly, be skinny however not too skinny, be horny however not too horny, achieve success however not too profitable … However I don’t wish to flirt and mom them, flirt and mom, flirt and mom. I don’t wish to flirt with you as a result of I don’t wish to fuck you, and I don’t wish to mom you as a result of I’m not your mom … I simply wish to work, mate. Is that OK? Speak and be heard, be talked to and hear. Male ego. Cease getting in the way in which.”
Talking to the Guardian in 2018, Knightley mentioned that she wrote the piece to attempt to “harness this second in time and use our voices to maintain the dialog going” and hoped that the feminine expertise can be extra explored – and due to this fact extra understood – sooner or later.
“Earlier than motherhood,” she mentioned, “you’re horny, but when we speak about the entire vagina-splitting factor then that’s terrifying; there’s no intercourse there, so what we do is go into the virgin-mother retrofit, that’s good and protected. The issue with these two photos is I believe only a few ladies truly determine with them. Girls are supposed to play the flirt or the mom with the intention to get their voice heard. I can’t. It makes me really feel sick.”
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