Keira Knightley is an English actress who became world-famous in 2003 with the American fantasy film Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. Knightley began her rise to Hollywood’s A-list in 1999 in Star Wars: Episode 1- The Phantom Menace and subsequently appeared in films such as Bend It Like Beckham, Pride, And Prejudice, and The Imitation Game. For her role in the latter, she was nominated for a Golden Globe, a Screen Actors Guild Award, a BAFTA, and an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.
Knightley was also featured in the historical drama Colette, based on the French novelist of the same name. The biopic had its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival 2018.
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In the wake of the sexual assault scandal that has rocked Hollywood, the British actress recently praised the MeToo movement and revealed that she too had been the victim of sexual harassment on four different occasions. However, she revealed that these cases had not happened on a film set but in her private life.
Keira Knightley Bio
Keira Christina Knightley was born on 26 March 1985 in a suburban area of South West London. Her original name was “Kiera” but her mother misspelled it on her birth certificate as “Keira” and they decided to make the mistake.
Her father Will Knightley is an actor and her mother Sharman Macdonald is an actress and screenwriter. Keira Knightley certainly had a large pool of acting genes to choose from! Her father is English, while her Scottish-born mother is of Scottish and Welsh descent.
Her only sibling is her older brother Caleb Knightley. She was a bridesmaid at his wedding to Kerry Nixon in Glasgow.
Knightley grew up in a modest household in Richmond, London, where she attended Stanley Junior School and Teddington School. She started acting at a very young age and when she was only 3 years old she asked for her own agent. This request was granted only after three years when Knightley turned six, and at the age of seven, Keira Knightley got her first role in Screen One: Royal Celebration (1993).
According to Juliet, written by her mother and the United States, written by her acting teacher, some of the many local productions are Knightley’s in which she appeared. She played her first major role in 2001 in the romantic adventure Princess of the Thieves by Walt Disney.
The actress enrolled at Esher College to study for her high school diploma, where she focused on art, history, and English literature. Keira Knightley left college after one year, however, when she was cast as Lara Antipova in Doctor Zhivago (2002).
Her breakthrough came in 2002 when she played the lead role in Gurinder Chadha’s sports comedy Bend It Like Beckham. Beyond the expectations of Knightley, who did not have high hopes for the project, Bend It Like Beckham was a huge success in both the UK and the US. Despite her initial pessimism about the project, Knightley won two awards for this achievement: the London Film Critics’ Circle for Best Newcomer and the Society of Online Film Critics’ Award for Best Groundbreaking Achievement.
Knightley and her co-star Parminder Nagra, who played the main characters of the up-and-coming footballers, received international recognition for their achievements in film. In order to prepare for their roles, they had to complete a 3-month football training under the English football coach Simon Clifford.
Although she had previously stated that she would never return to the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, Keira Knightley repeated her role of Elizabeth Swann with an appearance in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales in 2017.
Keira Knightley admits that she prefers historical films to modern films because of the tasteless way in which women are portrayed. According to the star of Pirates of the Caribbean, female characters are “almost always raped” in contemporary films.
Keira Knightley’s Husband
Keira Knightley is married to the English rock musician James Righton. Righton was a keyboard player in the London band Klaxons, which disbanded in 2015.
The couple was together for 2 years before they signed the Covenant for Life on 4 May 2013 in Provence, France. It was a private wedding ceremony with only 11 guests at Mazan Town Hall, only 12 miles from Marseille.
In May 2015 the couple welcomed their first child, a daughter named Edie Righton, to London. The much sought-after British actress returned only 5 months after the birth of her daughter.
Is She Related To Natalie Portman?
The two actresses certainly have a striking similarity, but they are not related in any way we know of. First of all, Knightley is English, while Portman is American.
Because of their great similarity, Knightley was chosen to play Queen Amadala’s maid and decoy in Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace (1999), while Natalie Portman played the queen.
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The resemblance between the two is so great that their own mothers were not able to tell them apart once in make-up and costume for the film. Knightley’s role as the bait queen was kept under wraps so as not to spoil the surprise. The promotions made the fans believe that Portman was playing both roles.
Her imitation of Portman goes beyond Star Wars, as England-born Keira Knightley has admitted to taking photos and signing autographs for fans who mistakenly thought she was Natalie Portman. Explaining that she is not Natalie Portman must be too much work for Knightley, so she simply decides to play along with the fans.
Keira Knightley Net Worth
Born in England, the beauty made it onto the Forbes annual list in 2008 as Hollywood’s second-highest-paid actress. She had earned a whopping 32 million dollars in 2007 and was the only non-American on the list of top-paid actresses that year.
Her net worth is currently estimated at 50 million dollars. A large part of this is, of course, due to her flourishing acting career and her lucrative advertising contract with the Chanel perfume Coco Mademoiselle.
