Pirates of the Caribbean did something to Keira Knightley that took years to undo
Pirates of the Caribbean made Keira Knightley one of the most famous women in the world before she was old enough to rent a car. What it cost her came out years later, on a podcast.
Keira Knightley was 18 when Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl came out in 2003, and by the time At World's End closed out the original trilogy in 2007, she was one of the biggest stars on the planet. In October 2018, promoting Colette, she sat down with The Hollywood Reporter's Awards Chatter podcast and explained what that run actually did to her. The interview made headlines everywhere, including the BBC, because of one sentence.
The hit after hit she couldn't enjoy
On paper, her early twenties were a winning streak: Bend It Like Beckham, three Pirates films, Love Actually and an Oscar nomination for Pride & Prejudice. Knightley described it from the inside instead.
"From the inside, all you're hearing is the criticism, really."
— Keira Knightley, to The Hollywood Reporter's Awards Chatter
She said interviewers would tell her everybody thought she was terrible, or fixate on her looks, while she knew she hadn't learned her craft yet. "I was 19," she added, per HuffPost. "You can only hear the negative stuff."
Then there were the photographers. Pirates turned her into tabloid material, and she described paparazzi screaming slurs at her to provoke a reaction they could sell, at the same time Britney Spears and Amy Winehouse were being chased through their own crises. Her summary, as Yahoo reported, was blunt.
"It was big money to get pictures of women falling apart."
— Keira Knightley, on the paparazzi of the mid-2000s
She called the whole period "a really rude awakening to the world of misogyny." Later that year, she told The Sunday Times Style she once woke up to find "10 men outside my front door," and that they didn't leave for about five years.
The breakdown at 22
This is the sentence that made the headlines. In 2007, the year At World's End came out, Knightley broke down.
"I did have a mental breakdown at 22."
— Keira Knightley, to The Hollywood Reporter
She took a year off and was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, which she put down to "all of that stuff." The awards season for Atonement landed right in the middle of it. She hadn't left her house in three months when the BAFTA nomination came in, and she told THR she went through hypnotherapy just so she could stand on the red carpet without having a panic attack, Refinery29 reported.
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Even her therapist was startled. Knightley said she was told most patients who believe they're being followed aren't. She was the first one for whom it was actually true.
How she undid it
Knightley credits her family and the friends she had before she was famous with getting her through it. The year off itself she later called "one of the most important years of my life," and she went "deep into therapy" before coming back.
When she did come back, she changed what she said yes to. Apart from the Pirates franchise, she stepped back from big-budget films, and her later run leaned on period pieces like The Imitation Game and Colette. When she returned to work, she said, she felt good, and suddenly didn't care what people thought.
The franchise that made her a star took about five years of paparazzi and one year off to work out of her system. The fix wasn't a bigger hit. It was smaller movies and caring less.
Previously we wrote: The man who made Gollum count as acting is putting AI in Hunt for Gollum