Keira Knightley has spoken out in regards to the intimidation and intrusion she skilled initially of her profession, when she was “stalked by males” who blamed her for his or her aggressive curiosity.
Speaking to the Los Angeles Times, Knightley stated that whilst 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 wished this.’ It was rape communicate. You know, ‘This is what you deserve.’ It was a really violent, misogynistic ambiance.”
Knightley rose to prominence aged 17 together with her position in Bend It Like Beckham, earlier than discovering worldwide fame with the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise and Love Actually.
“It’s very brutal to have your privateness taken away in your teenage years, early 20s, and to be put below that scrutiny at a degree when you find yourself nonetheless rising,” Knightley stated.
“Having stated 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 form of success once more. It completely set me up for all times. Did it come at a price? Yes, it did. It got here at a giant price.”
The actor stated 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 wished to be stalked by males. Whether that was stalking as a result of any individual was mentally in poor health, or as a result of individuals had 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, stated she believes the web has exacerbated the issue. “Social media has put that in a complete different context, while you have a look at the injury that’s been achieved to younger girls, to teenage ladies,” she stated. “Ultimately, that’s what fame is – it’s being publicly shamed. A variety of teenage ladies don’t survive that.”
In an interview with the Times of London final month, Knightley stated that the recognition of the Pirates movies put her in a troublesome place: financially secure, however emotionally besieged.
“It’s a humorous factor when you might have one thing that was making and breaking you on the identical time,” Knightley stated. “I used to be seen as shit due to them, and but as a result of they did so nicely I used to be given the chance to do the movies that I ended up getting Oscar nominations for.
“They had been essentially the most profitable movies I’ll ever be part of, and so they had been the rationale that I used to be taken down publicly. So 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 in a position to stroll the Baftas pink carpet for Atonement in 2008.
In 2018, Knightley wrote an essay, The Weaker Sex, which addressed how express and internalised misogyny silences girls. It ended with a broadside in opposition to male colleagues:
“Tell me what it’s to be a lady. Be good, be supportive, be fairly however not too fairly, be skinny however not too skinny, be attractive however not too attractive, achieve success however not too profitable … But I don’t need to flirt and mom them, flirt and mom, flirt and mom. I don’t need to flirt with you as a result of I don’t need to fuck you, and I don’t need to mom you as a result of I’m not your mom … I simply need to work, mate. Is that OK? Talk and be heard, be talked to and pay attention. Male ego. Stop getting in the way in which.”
Speaking to the Guardian in 2018, Knightley stated 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 could be extra explored – and subsequently extra understood – sooner or later.
“Before motherhood,” she stated, “you’re attractive, 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 downside with these two photos is I feel only a few girls really establish with them. Women 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.”
