Keira Knightley talks about the difficult years that followed with sudden fame Pirates of the Caribbeansaying that the non-stop attention from the paparazzi pushed her to her limits.
In a recent interview with The Times of London‘, the British star admitted: ‘I went crazy’ as photographers started following her everywhere.
“It was mainly ‘wh–re’ [they’d shout]she said.
“‘Sl–t’ sometimes. Especially when I was with someone – a friend, my brother or my father. They were trying to get a reaction out of them – daring people to hit them so they could file a lawsuit.”
Knightley recalled how the paparazzi culture became even more dangerous at the time.
“That’s when the crashes started — they were forcing people off the road and then getting even more money for pictures of a crashed actress or whatever,” she said.
“And then Britney shaved her head so it looked like, ‘Great, we can get them to do something damn crazy.'”
The pressure led Knightley to take drastic measures to protect himself. She said she went into survival mode and started wearing the same outfit every day to make herself less attractive to the tabloids.
“Three pairs of the same jeans, striped T-shirt, boots. I gave away all my other clothes,” she explained.
She also learned to stop giving photographers the reaction they wanted.
“And then, when I was being followed, I stopped walking,” she said.
“I literally stood there. Silently. One day I stood there for five hours. ‘If you’re still there, I’m not going. I’m not moving.'” Eventually, the paparazzi lost interest.
“It wasn’t a valuable opportunity for them if I was always in the same clothes and standing still,” she added. “There are only so many times you can write, ‘Ooh, she’s wearing the same clothes,’ with a photo of me standing still. It gets boring.”
The constant harassment eventually forced her to quit acting altogether. Knightley said her family supported her decision to run away.
“My family supported me. They said, ‘Just f–king walk.'”
She moved to London for a while and then traveled around Europe by train, blending in with the crowd.
“I was very good,” she said. “Museums, trains… no one expects to see you there. I was very shabby, which they didn’t expect. You just don’t make eye contact, you kind of hunch over. I kind of slipped.”
Knightley was only 18 at the time of Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean franchise made her a global star.
Looking back, she admitted that fame came at a high cost. She told me The times Last year she was “stalked by men” and made to feel like she “deserved it” because she was famous.
“It was a brutal time to be in the public eye as a young woman,” she said.
Now, years later, Knightley continues to work on her own terms and can currently be seen in the Netflix original film The woman in cabin 10which is now streaming.
