Keira Knightley has stated that her role in the Pirates of the Caribbean series played a significant part in establishing her career, even though she described the experience as being “traumatic”.
25 years ago, Knightley, now 39 and a two-time Academy Award nominee, gained her first major Hollywood role as Sabé in Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace.
Since that breakthrough, she has appeared in a variety of films including Bend It Like Beckham, the 2005 adaptation of Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice, and more recently, the dark comedy Silent Night.
One of Knightley’s iconic roles that boosted her to international fame was in the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie, The Curse of the Black Pearl.
In this film, the actress, who was only 17 at the time, took on the character of Elizabeth Swann, the daughter of Governor Weatherby Swann (Jonathan Pryce) and the romantic interest of Will Turner (played by Orlando Bloom).
After The Curse of the Black Pearl became a hit, Knightley returned for its sequels, Dead Man’s Chest, At World’s End, and Dead Men Tell No Tales.
In 2016, Knightley, a mother of two, discussed her challenging experience during the filming of Curse of the Black Pearl, calling it ‘traumatic’.
“I found it pretty horrific. I’m not an extrovert, so I found that level of scrutiny and that level of fame really hard,” she shared with Variety in 2016.
“It was an age where you are becoming, you haven’t become, and you need to make mistakes. It’s a very precarious age, particularly for women.
“You’re in some ways still a child. It was traumatic, but it set up the rest of my career.”
In 2008, when she was in her early 20s, Knightley revealed she had to undergo hypnotherapy to prevent a panic attack on the BAFTA red carpet and was later diagnosed with PTSD.
In an interview with the Hollywood Reporter in 2018, she said: “I did have a mental breakdown at 22, so I did take a year off there and was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder because of all of that stuff. I went deep into therapy and all of that.”
During the initial stages of her career, Knightley admitted to being ‘incredibly hard on herself’.
In a 2023 interview with Harper’s Bazaar, she expressed: “I was never good enough. I was utterly single-minded. I was so ambitious. I was so driven.
“I was always trying to get better and better and improve, which is an exhausting way to live your life. Exhausting.
“I am in awe of my 22-year-old self, because I’d like a bit more of her back. And it’s only by not being like that any longer that I realise how extraordinary it was. But it does have a cost.”
Despite this, the Disney actress seems to have no regrets.
“I’m unbelievably lucky now, and my career is in a place where I really enjoy it, and I have a level of fame that’s much less intense,” Knightley told Variety in 2018.
“I can deal with it now, and that’s great. But at the time, it was not so great, and took many years of therapy to figure it out.”