Keira Knightly…
Keira Christina Knightley was born to Will Knightley (also an actor) and Sharman MacDonald (actor-turned-playwright) on the 26th of March, 1985.
She first asked her parents for an agent at the tender age of three, but they refused, not wanting their daughter to follow them onto the stage. Keira kept at them, and they finally gave in when she was six. However, her parents still had a few tricks up their sleeves. As part of the deal, Keira, who is dyslexic, had to study through the school holidays, and she was only permitted to work on productions if they didn’t interfere with her education.
In 1994, at the age of nine, she completed her first movie, starring as Natasha Jordan in Moira Armstrong’s ‘A Village Affair’. Following this, she played a number of small roles in other productions.
Her first high profile role came in 1999, when she played the part of Sabe, the decoy queen in Star Wars Episode I. Her part in the film was kept secret in the lead up to the much anticipated release, and Natalie Portman was promoted as having played the roles of both the real and decoy queens so as not to spoil the surprise. A lot of fans still think Portman played both roles.
Since then, she has completed an impressive array of films, including the made-for-TV movie ‘Princess of Thieves’, the series ‘Oliver Twist’, and the thriller ‘The Hole’. She also played a small role in ‘Deflation’.
Keira’s ‘breakthrough’ role came with Gurinder Chadha’s ‘Bend It Like Beckham’, which was an unexpected hit worldwide. In order to play the part, she endured 20 weeks of tough football practice – her coach, who had trained top players, declared her more naturally talented than Michael Owen.
With the success of Bend It Like Beckham came a flurry of roles. She stepped into Julie Christie’s shoes for the controversial remake of the classic ‘Dr. Zhivago’, played Louise in ‘Pure’, and filmed ‘Love, Actually’ alongside Liam Neeson and Hugh Grant.
Soon after, Disney snapped her up to fill the corset of Elizabeth Swann in the summer box office hit ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’. Keira’s latest role sees her breathe life into King Arthur’s Guinevere in the July 2004 release of the same name.
The good news for Keira’s fans is that her roles just keep getting bigger and bigger, and her star brighter and brighter. Rest assured that we will be seeing a lot more of Keira in the future.
Much has been made of Keira Knightley’s slender frame and relatively flat chest!
Indeed, Keira herself has spoken openly of not having breasts, but ‘pecs’, and said that she would die for a curvy body like Scarlett Johansson’s.
But in an extraordinarily revealing interview, the actress has told of how American audiences view her rather differently.
The 21-year-old star of the Pirates of the Caribbean films has spoken of her bemusement at being surgically enhanced by computer trickery in promotional material publicising her films in the US.
She says studio executives and magazine publishers have decided that instead of presenting her as she really is, she should be seen as a lot bustier in case her flat chest ‘turned people off’.
The actress says her breasts were digitally boosted for the advertising campaign for her 2004 movie King Arthur.
She also claims magazine publishers in the US ban stars from appearing on their front covers unless they have at least a C-cup size, or are willing to be digitally enhanced to make it appear as if they have.
Keira, who played Guinevere in King Arthur, said her normal breasts were blown out of all proportion and looked droopy on the advert to promote the film.
‘Those things certainly weren’t mine,’ she told a US magazine yesterday.
‘I remember we had an interesting discussion when they said, “We want to make them slightly larger and you’ll get approval” and I was like, “OK, fine. ‘I honestly don’t give a s***.”
‘But then they showed me the first copy and these things must have been double-Es – and they were down to my knees.
‘And I was like, “I don’t mind you making them bigger, but don’t give me droopy breasts. They look like your grandmother’s t***’, the actress said.
She then went on to say the incident was certainly not the first time she has had her chest digitally enhanced.
She explained: ‘I did one magazine and found out you’re not actually allowed to be on a cover in the US without at least a C cup because it turns people off.
‘Apparently they have done market research and found that women want to see no less than a C cup on other women. Isn’t that crazy? ‘So they made my t*** bigger for that as well.’
Miss Knightley’s comments will be seen as refreshingly honest in an industry fettered by publicists and agents watching every word. the actress has an agent, but unusually, no publicist.
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