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 Keira Knightley Elle Magazine Cover Story If Hillary Clinton still needs further evidence that the entirety of Generation Y isn't suffering from indolence, a grossly out-of-whack sense of entitlement, and Xbox-triggered carpal tunnel syndrome, she might want to consider the saga of Keira Knightley. Raised in a London suburb by her dad, theater and TV actor Will Knightley, and her actress-turned-playwright mother, Sharman Macdonald, Knightley famously informed her parents that she'd like to get an agent…at the ripe age of three.
Judiciously, they put the rug rat off until she turned seven. In the years since, Knightley, now just 21, has crossed off pretty much every item on a checklist of milestones that any aspiring actress could hope to accomplish in the span of a long career.
The quirky indie cred came early with her breakout role in 2002's Bend It Like Beckham, a film that, despite costing about as much as a can of tomato soup to produce and concerning the questionably marketable subject of girls playing soccer, managed to gross more than $76 million worldwide.
Knightley made Ebert swoon and went on to score an Oscar nomination for her nuanced, vulnerable portrayal of Elizabeth Bennet in Pride & Prejudice, a sweet little film that served as a welcome sorbet following two expensive, testosterone-soaked critical flops, King Arthur and Domino. The mass adulation came as Knightley, who, despite being closer to Olive Oyl than Marilyn Monroe on the starlet body-type continuum, dispatched pneumatic icons like Angelina Jolie to be voted sexiest film actress of all time by readers of the British movie magazine Empire. As for a glamorous, crazily remunerative gig shilling stuff, Knightley recently unseated fellow striking beanpole Kate Moss to be the new face of Chanel's Coco Mademoiselle fragrance line. And somehow, unlike certain American contemporaries, she matured publicly with her dignity intact, with nary a public catfight or embarrassing head-in-toilet photo in her tabloid file.
How does she pull it off? "Since the first time I met her, she's been totally unwilling to compromise herself in any way," says Orlando Bloom, her swashbuckling snog-mate in Pirates of the Caribbean. "She hasn't picked up any sort of entourage. She surrounds herself with friends and family, which is key to maintaining a sense of reality even when everything seems unreal. She just possesses that rare grounded quality."
"Keira's an incredibly focused young woman," says Joe Wright, who directed her in Pride & Prejudice and has cast her in his upcoming adaptation of Ian McEwan's novel Atonement. "I think she was underestimated for a while, and I think she set out to disprove that when playing Elizabeth. She wanted to make sure she was getting the kind of attention that she deserves for a reason. She's not particularly into this whole celebrity bullshit thing. Keira actually really loves the craft of acting and just wants to be the best craftswoman she can be."
What else can Knightley achieve in the next 70 or so years she's got left on Earth? With the opening of Pirates of the Caribbean 2: Dead Man's Chest comes the first indicator of whether Knightley will be able to boast of starring in one of the most successful film franchises of all time. The first Pirates grossed more than $650 million worldwide—enough to convince Disney to cough up the kind of loot required to lure Knightley, Bloom, and Johnny Depp into baking in the hot Caribbean sun for nearly eight months while concurrently shooting two sequels.
That searing sunshine was a distant memory the rainy night ELLE spoke with Knightley in Rome, where she was midway through shooting Silk, an independent period romance set for release next year. Gazing out the window of her room at the Hotel Raphael at the glistening cobblestones of the piazza below, the sparky ingenue chatted about her persnickety parents, the lingering rumors of surgical enhancement, and that Pride & Prejudice costar boyfriend she's so secretively tucked away.
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