Keira Knightley Full Biography

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Keira Knightley Full Biography Page 2

Now the offers of work were coming in thick and fast. 2001 saw her star in the Disney-backed TV production Princess Of Thieves where she played Gwynn, daughter of Robin Hood and Maid Marian, who, despite her father's promise to her dying mother, has secretly become an adept at archery and horse-riding. This proves helpful when Robin is imprisoned by the Sheriff of Nottingham (Malcolm McDowell) and attempts are made to assassinate Philip, the rightful heir to the throne. Only Gwynn and her dopey sidekick Froderick (who loves her on the quiet) stand between England and disaster.

It was an endearing romp and her first starring role (though she had headlined Star Wars I in an odd kind of way, as the Queen Amidala doll sold as merchandise had resembled Keira rather than Natalie Portman). It also introduced her to actor Del Synnott who played Froderick and would go on to star in the TV series Lock, Stock And Two Smoking Barrels and play D.S Carter in Murphy's Law. The couple would still be seeing each other when Knightley struck gold in 2003.

Immediately after Princess Of Thieves came another venture onto the big screen with the Brit horror flick The Hole. Here, alongside Thora Birch, Keira played one of four public schoolkids who are trapped for 2 weeks in a deep cavity originally intended as a bomb shelter. Keira's character, Frankie, is blonde, charismatic and bitchy, going topless in her more lusty moments (a tad dodgy this as Knightley was only just 16 when the movie was released). And all ends bloodily as The Hole reveals itself to be a cross between The Breakfast Club and Lord Of The Flies, the excellent Embeth Davidtz playing the psychologist who must unravel the truth behind the unholy mess. Though not a hit itself, the movie would bring Keira to the attention of the makers of both Bend It Like Beckham and Dr Zhivago.

Naturally, her education had to continue and, after filming the short Deflation (directed by Roger Ashton-Griffiths, Friar Tuck in Princess Of Thieves, who was assisted by her mother Sharman), Knightley sat for her GCSEs while in the middle of shooting Bend It Like Beckham (is it a sign of falling standards that she still got 6 A-grades?). Soon the schedule would be too much to bear. Having started her A-levels at her local Esher College, where she studied Art, English Literature, History and Classical Civilisations, she dropped out during the first year, in order to take on Gillies MacKinnon's Pure and the major miniseries Dr Zhivago.

First though came Bend It Like Beckham. Here a young Asian girl dreams of playing football for England but is dissuaded by her disapproving parents. That is, until she's spotted playing in the park by Keira, a star of semi-pro girls' team the Hounslow Harriers. So she joins up and begins to live her dream, though there's trouble when both she and Keira fall for coach Jonathan Rhys-Meyers.

The movie was a real charmer and a major British success. Keira stood out as the tomboy Juliette Paxton, both in the scenes with her mother Juliet Stevenson, who attempts to make her wear a Wonderbra, and in the action sequences. For these she'd trained hard, at points with Simon Clifford, a coach of some renown who'd worked with Manchester United and with a young Michael Owen. Indeed, Clifford claimed that Knightley had picked up some aspects of the game quicker than Owen had (though of course she lacked his searing pace and unscrupulous penalty-winning techniques). The performance would win her the Best Newcomer Award from the London Critics Circle in 2003.

But 2002 wasn't finished yet. After joining Synnott (who'd also appeared with her in Deflation) with a brief role in the silly comedy Thunderpants, where a grossly flatulent schoolboy is hired by NASA, she moved on to Pure. This saw Molly Parker as a young mother trying to bring up a 10-year-old boy while struggling with heroin addiction on an east London council estate. He's befriended by Keira, the worldly-wise waitress at the local café who understands his situation but cannot prevent her own slide into addiction and prostitution. Depressing stuff, but well played.

It was time for yet another period drama, this time a "sexed-up" remake of David Lean's Dr Zhivago. Here Keira took on the role of Lara Antipova, a brave move considering she had to follow the character from the age of 16 to 32, as well as match the original enigmatic performance of Julie Christie. Not easy, given that, amidst the turbulence of the Russian revolution, she must represent Russia itself as she's abused and pursued by a series of men, including Hans Matheson's Zhivago and Sam Neill's Komarovsky. For the second time Keira engaged in on-screen steaminess (the part had actually been turned down by singer Andrea Corr due to the excessive nudity), stating categorically that it was all part of the job.

Heavily advertised, Dr Zhivago was Knightley's breakthrough in the UK. And she enjoyed the experience throughout. Filming for three months in Slovakia and Prague, she'd had her own flat for the first time and, being as the flat was in the red light area, was pleasantly intrigued by the sleazy freedom of the dirty video shop on the corner, the prostitute who worked the turf outside her window, and the constant sex in the nearby bushes. You don't get that in Richmond.

She followed Dr Zhivago with three shorts. The first, The Seasons Alter, was an interpretation of Titania's famous "weather" speech in A Midsummer Night's Dream, with Keira delivering an extract alongside Cherie Lunghi's Titania and Lloyd Owen's Oberon. Then there'd be New Year's Eve, about a posh party where a fellow chats up Keira, thinking she's a respectable seventeen, only for trouble to brew when it's revealed that she's dangerously younger. Then there was the animated Gaijin, where she performed several roles, one being a British student who, unable to make friends in Tokyo, tries to program her robot to play Japanese music, only for the robot to cause more problems.

Now came Keira's big year. In 2003's Pirates Of The Caribbean: The Curse Of The Black Pearl she played Elizabeth Swann, daughter of British governor Jonathan Pryce, who's kidnapped by Geoffrey Rush, an undead buccaneer needing her blood to find redemption. Pursued by her wannabe lover Orlando Bloom and Johnny Depp's camp and hilarious Jack Sparrow, she remained feisty to the last, even when walking the plank.

Despite fears that the movie would follow Cutthroat Island down to Davy Jones' Locker, it performed exceptionally well, quickly rising over the $200 million mark in the US. At the same time, Bend It Like Beckham, taking advantage of Keira's newfound kudos, had its release widened from 119 veues to 990, its take instantly rising to $28.3 million (not bad on a budget of $4.5 million) with plenty more to come. Keira, who'd turned 18 just after the Pirates shoot ended, was now A-list and a bona fide cover girl. After all, as critic AA Gill had put it, "the camera just licks Knightley's face like an enraptured dog". Plans would immediately be put in place for Pirates 2.

After Pirates would come Love, Actually, which intertwined ten tales of love, featuring such luminaries as Hugh Grant, Liam Neeson, Laura Linney, and Alan Rickman. Knightley claimed to have been continuously star-struck on-set and, for once acting her age, said she was less impressed by the major league thespians Rickman and Leeson than by former EastEnders actress Martine McCutcheon. There'd be further exposure when she became the new face of both luxury goods firm Asprey and the British Dyslexia Association.

After this, it was off to Ireland to play Guinevere opposite Clive Owen's titular regent in King Arthur, like Pirates a Jerry Bruckheimer production. This would claim to be more of a historical document than another stab at the Arthurian myth, with Arthur as a Roman general at the time of the Empire's downfall. Well, Hollywood knows best. Keira's Guinevere would be a member of British royalty, a woad-smeared warrior princess who joins forces with Arthur against the invading Saxon hordes.

Keira's next project was to have been Tulip Fever, with Tom Stoppard adapting Deborah Moggach's novel of the crazy "tulip bubble" of 17th Century Amsterdam, Keira starring alongside Jude Law and Jim Broadbent. However, Chancellor Gordon Brown saw fit to cancel tax breaks available to British film-makers, throwing many projects into disarray, including Tulip Fever. Instead, Keira moved on to a Steven Soderbergh production, The Jacket, where Oscar-winner Adrien Brody played a Gulf War veteran charged with murder and locked in a mental institution awaiting execution. In here, like the hero in Slaughterhouse 5, he comes adrift in time, his jacket serving as a transporter. Now he travels through the past and tries to change events leading to the murder while at the same time seeking the woman of his dreams, someone he's met only once, when she was just a child, and who bears a striking resemblance to Keira, the only hospital worker who will help him. Originally planned as a mainstream thriller, The Jacket would have its budget reduced and be made as an art-house movie - and was all the darker and better for that.

Having missed out on Tulip Fever, Keira now found herself speaking the words of Deborah Moggach anyway, when the writer co-wrote the screenplay of her next project, a re-adaptation of Jane Austen's Pride And Prejudice. This saw Keira in the key role of Elizabeth Bennet, one of five sisters hoping to marry above their station and enduring all manner of misunderstanding and social intrigue. Matthew MacFadyen would play her D'Arcy. In real life, her D'Arcy had changed at the end of 2003 when, her relationship with Del Synott over, she took up with Irish model Jamie Dornan.

Pride and Prejudice proved to be far more than just another Jane Austen adaptation. Not only did it make money in the States, it also saw Keira, her performance described by uber-critic Roger Ebert as "light and yet fierce", nominated for both an Oscar and a Golden Globe.

Following hot on its heels would come a very different proposition in Domino, where she'd play the title role of Domino Harvey, daughter of the actor Laurence Harvey, who rebelled against her privileged background and left a career in modelling to become an LA bounty hunter. Directed by Tony Scott, the movie would be very grungey, slipping (maybe) between fantasy and reality, and Knightley would be tested by a role that required her to be almost continuously angry.

Any further career expansion would be put on temporary hold as she now filmed two sequels for Pirates Of The Caribbean back to back, the first seeing Depp's Jack Sparrow attempting to save the soul he's bargained away with Davey Jones and his phantom crew, the second having Knightley kidnapped by Chow Yun-Fat's wicked corsair. But she would then find a meatier role in Silk, based on the novel by Alessandro Baricco. Here a 19th Century French silk merchant would travel to Japan, seeking silkworms to replace those killed by an epidemic in his own country. While there, though, he falls for the sultry concubine of a rich Japanese baron, an absolutely forbidden love, leading his wife Keira, a resourceful and passionate woman, to plot rather shocking ways of both feeding and destroying his new obsession. In all senses, it would be an erotic epic.

Knightley was certain to stay hot for some years to come. It had been an extraordinary success story. This dyslexic kid with no formal training had suddenly conquered Hollywood. Her films had made money, Pride And Prejudice had earned her the Academy's respect, and she STILL wasn't even 21. Absurd.