Kyra Hall
People cannot believe how old Keira Knightley was in the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie.
Knightley, 39, is an award-winning actress who has starred in movies such as Pride & Prejudice, Atonement, and Anna Karenina.
From an early age, she always knew she wanted to be an actress and by the age of six, she had an agent and was already appearing in small parts in TV shows and films.
She landed the role of Sabé in Star Wars: Episode I—The Phantom Menace and became a breakout star with her part as Jules in Bend It Like Beckham.
The role that truly catapulted Knightley to stardom was as Elizabeth Swann in the first Pirates of the Caribbean film.
While fans know this was early in the star’s career, many have been left shocked to learn how old she was when filming for the blockbuster hit.
People have been reacting to her age in the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie, saying it’s left them ‘shaken to the core.’
One person writes: “Wtf, I never knew.”
Another adds: “She was WHAT.”
“Geez, I didn’t realize I was the same age as her,” pens a third. “When I watched the movie I thought she was older than me.”
Somebody else comments: “This must be a LIE.”
Although Knightley’s role in Pirates of the Caribbean made her a household name, she’s since shared that this part of her career was ‘traumatic.’
In an interview with Variety, the actress revealed that she had undergone therapy to help her handle the ‘level of scrutiny and that level of fame’ she was facing.
She explained: “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.”
Five years after filming the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie, Knightley experienced a ‘mental breakdown’ due to being shadowed by the paparazzi.
“The value of photographs of any famous young women at the time went up if they were of a very negative nature,” she recalled to The Telegraph.
“So if you weren’t already having a mental breakdown, they were trying to push you into doing things that kept your value as high as those who were.”
Knightley ended up having a break from acting and when she returned, she decided she ‘didn’t want to do big-budget films anymore, because the fame that came with them I just couldn’t handle.’
In an interview with The Guardian, the actress described herself as being ‘pretty neurotic’ until she experienced an epiphany at 25. At this point, she considered she may have taken everything, including any criticism, too seriously.
However, she still is pretty adamant she won’t join another blockbuster franchise – Knightley joined the Pirates of the Caribbean series at 17 going on 18 and it was a period she found ‘very hard.’
“There are people who can do it and deal with it brilliantly, and in the scheme of things I should absolutely have been able to deal with it all better than I did,” she mused.
“But I failed. And it’s just a sort of personality thing. Even if I did another one now, I don’t know that I’d be confident I could deal with it any better, really.”
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