Keira Knightley: Lady in waiting

The star of 'The Duchess' has reached the point in her short, head-turning career when she risks becoming more famous for being famous than for her work. Is it time audiences woke up to her acting talents?

Despite being only 23, Keira Knightley – actress, muse and beauty – is already a veteran of fame. Her latest role, as Georgiana Spencer, Duchess of Devonshire in The Duchess, is her 13th in a mainstream film in six years. She knows the highs of fame: the attention, adoration, the financial rewards. She also knows the lows: the paparazzi, the lack of privacy, the hysterical bitching about her face, her figure, her talent.

Her critics say she cannot act, that she pouts theatrically at the camera, that she is too thin. Last year, Knightley sued the Daily Mail for suggesting that she had lied about being anorexic and for running a picture of her alongside a story about a girl who died from the disorder. “Someone saying you have a mental illness is obviously rather difficult to take,” she said. “And particularly when they’re blaming you for killing someone.”

She has become hate figure for a certain sort of woman. One newspaper columnist wrote, “If you want to befriend a woman, ask her the question, ‘What do you think of Keira Knightley?’ In the resulting torrent of bile and loathing, you will bond.” Another female journalist wrote a vicious attack on her last year: “When I look at Keira Knightley I do not see a subtle sexy siren… I see a mediocre actress who wears a permanent pout… She is just a pretty plank of wood… [she has a] minuscule pair of breasts and shapeless pair of pins.”

So what has Knightley, a young, reserved, hard-working British actress, done to deserve such negativity?

She was born in Teddington, Middlesex, in 1985 to an actor father, Will Knightley (who founded the left-wing theatre company Half Moon) and a playwright mother, Sharman Macdonald. She has an elder brother, Caleb, who is 29. Knightley attended comprehensive school in Teddington and then Esher College; she is dyslexic and was quoted early in her career as saying that she was unhappy at school – although she has never repeated this.

Aged three, so the story goes, she asked her parents for an agent and started working aged seven. Her first proper acting role was as Judith in a TV drama called Coming Home, when she was 12. At 15, she starred with American Beauty star Thora Birch in the teen thriller The Hole, and at 16 landed a part as Lara in a TV series remake of Doctor Zhivago. Taking the part meant that she did not finish her A-levels, which she has said she now regrets. (“Do I feel supremely stupid for not having got my A-levels? Yes, completely.”) It was Knightley’s role as Jules in the British film Bend It Like Beckham that made her a star. She was recognised by the industry as a rare beauty and has been on the front cover of most major British magazines, including Vogue, Tatler and Glamour.

She is consistently rated high in opinion polls: She was ranked No 79 by FHM in its UK version of the 100 Sexiest Women in the World list in 2004, No 18 in 2005, and was named “the sexiest woman in the world in 2006”. The US edition ranked her No 54 in 2004, No 11 in 2005, and No 5 in 2006.

Knightley also appeared nude along with Scarlett Johansson on the cover of Vanity Fair’s March 2006 Hollywood issue. She was also named “the number one beauty icon of 2007” by a poll of 2,500 people conducted by UK high street chain Superdrug. Knightley has also been the face of the luxury goods company Asprey, and has done commercials in Japan for Lux haircare products. She has been the face of Chanel’s perfume Coco Mademoiselle.

Major film roles came thick and fast: Love Actually (2003), Pirates of the Caribbean (2003), King Arthur (2004), The Jacket (2005) and Domino (2005).

It is Knightley’s earlier performances in action films and shoot-’em-ups such as Domino that have earned her the greatest criticism of her acting abilities. Despite the huge success of Pirates of the Caribbean in 2003, in which Knightley plays feisty maiden Elizabeth Swann, later films did not do so well. King Arthur was dismissed as “drab and exhausting” and Domino was called “a mess in every way” and “one of the most rotten movies of the year”. Although it was acknowledged in both cases that the badness of the films were more down to directors than Knightley’s sometimes rigid performance, it confirmed to Knightley-haters what they wanted to know: she was just a pretty face; she couldn’t act; her success was unmerited.

Knightley reads her reviews and says that she was upset by the negative ones. “I seem to have a homing device for bad reviews,” she said in an interview with Jonathan Ross. “Wherever they are, I will find them. I’ve never seen a good one, actually.” Her exposure had made her a sitting duck to those who thought she was not pretty enough or talented enough to warrant her success.

She has been forced to defend herself emphatically, at times giving the impression of prickliness; the press interviews she has given have changed over the years from youthfully exuberant to wary and at times bad tempered.

She has had to admit that she is not at the top of her professional game, saying, “People were looking at me and thinking, ‘Well, she’s not very good, she’s just a pretty face, don’t know what all the fuss is about,’ but I wasn’t any good at my job yet.” And she has had to make excuses for her body shape (“I’ve always been skinny”) as well as explaining her famous pout. “It’s when I’m nervous and my neck gets really, really tense and then that pressure sort of squeezes up to my lips and they pout out and, well, there you go, that’s the pout.”

The paparazzi have made her life difficult, and she says that their attention at times makes her cry. “It’s very scary,” she has said. “Usually there are about five waiting outside my house. It’s worst when you’re in a minicab and you’re being followed by paparazzi in cars because they jump red lights. Then the minicab driver gets freaked out and goes faster and then you’re in a sort of high-speed chase and you think, ‘God, all it would take would be a kid to step out into the road right now…'”

For an actress, Knightley is relatively outspoken. Both she and Amanda Foreman, the writer of The Duchess, complained about promotional material for the film that made comparisons between Georgiana and Princess Diana. Posters have the tagline “There were three people in her marriage”. The trailer for The Duchess shows a clip of the princess juxtaposed with Keira as Georgiana and accompanied by the words: “The two were related by ancestry and united by destiny.” A voiceover adds: “History repeats itself.” “I am Georgiana,” said Knightley firmly. “I am not Diana. This film is not about Diana.”

She is known in press interviews for her blunt attitude and prolific swearing. In a recent interview, she told the interviewer to “fuck off” no fewer than four times in response to questions she didn’t like, including one about how much she earns. (Forbes magazine claimed she made $32m last year. She says not.) She refuses to discuss any aspect of her romantic life. Rumours circulated that when she broke up with former boyfriend, the actor Del Synnott, and started going out with the Northern Irish male model Jamie Dornan, Synnott threatened suicide, a story that she has never confirmed nor denied. Her relationship with Dornan broke up in 2005 and she began dating her Pride & Prejudice co-star Rupert Friend.

Her occasionally cringing attitude towards interviews hasn’t helped her public perception. Professionally, it was the support of the Pride & Prejudice director Joe Wright that turned the tide in Knightley’s favour. The 2005 film was a greater success than expected, and Knightley’s performance as Elizabeth Bennet, opposite Matthew Mcfadyen’s Mr Darcy, was praised.

Variety said: “More than the older Jennifer Ehle in the TV series, she catches Elizabeth’s essential skittishness and youthful braggadocio, making her final conversion all the more moving.” But she was not nominated for a Best Actress Bafta that year; those who suspected this was simply mean-spiritedness on behalf of the British felt vindicated when she was nominated for a Best Actress Oscar. Wright used his Bafta acceptance speech to embarrass the industry for overlooking her. “It’s a real shame and I don’t understand it,” he said. “I think she’s exquisite,” he said in a later interview. “She just needs a bit of care and attention and she can light up the screen.”

“With Pride & Prejudice,” Knightley has said, “yes, I was at least trying to say: look, see, I can learn, I can do this, or at least give me the right director and I’ll give it my best shot. I am trying to become a good actress, really I am.”

Knightley scored another direct hit with last year’s adaptation of Ian McEwan’s Atonement, another film directed by Wright, which received seven Oscar nominations; this time, Knightley was nominated for a Best Actress Bafta.

Her reviews in the more recent The Edge of Love have been excellent, those for The Duchess less so. There have been accusations that she is “mannerist” and that she lacks the “thin, shrill edge of neurosis that made her performance compelling in Atonement”.

For the moment Knightley is not working, but despite the determination of some to bring her down, she is unlikely to fade into middle distance.

“We’re desperate for stars in this country,” said Gurinder Chadha, the director of Bend It Like Beckham. “Keira’s been created by that, and so quickly. We need her to be big. One day, probably very soon, she’ll nail a part so perfectly and the whole world will put aside jealousies and snobberies and we’ll go in unison: Keira’s really good.”

A life in brief

Born 26 March 1985, Teddington, Middlesex.

Family Daughter of award-winning playwright mother, Sharman Macdonald, and actor father, Will Knightley. In long-term relationship with actor Rupert Friend.

Early life Famously demanded an agent aged three, got one at six. Grew up in Richmond and went to local schools where her dyslexia didn’t hinder her success.

Career After a number of TV films and a minor role in Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace, she got her big break with Bend It Like Beckham in 2002. Starred in the blockbuster Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy, and Love Actually (2003). Has since been in several period films, including Pride & Prejudice (2005) and The Duchess (2008).

She says “I think it’s important to make time for the people in your life who you love and who love you back.”

They Say “A wonderful girl. Eats like a pig for everyone out there who calls her anorexic.” The Edge of Love co-star Sienna Miller