Keira Knightley attended the low- key London premiere of her new film Misbehaviour last week. In it, she plays a feminist activist fighting to derail the 1970 Miss World pageant and take a stand against misogyny. Chatting to Grazia ahead of the event, she looked resplendent in white Chanel, a million miles from the harassed single mother she plays in the film. Although Keira revealed parenting in 2020 comes with its own challenges, not least social media.
‘I worry about my kids and the pressure that will be put on them,’ she said. ‘As a parent, you’re always saying, “You’re amazing the way you are!” “Look how your body works!” “Look how strong you are!” But it’s not just about the parents. It’s about the culture around those kids.’
Keira, who has two daughters – Edie, four, and Delilah, six months – with husband James Righton, is ‘purposefully’ not on social media. But she says she may sign up at the point her daughters are doing it, ‘so I can basically stalk them’.
The actor, who turns 35 next week, has been refreshingly frank about her struggles with anxiety and the steps she has taken to beat it, including avoiding social media.
Her anxiety spiked as a teenager, when she shot to fame in films such as 2002’s Bend It Like Beckham and 2003’s Love Actually. Landing such high-profile roles at such a young age made her a fixture on red carpets and in the tabloids, where everything about her appearance was scrutinised.
‘I was very young,’ she recalls. ‘It was a very extreme time. There was a lot of money to be made on young women having breakdowns and, if they weren’t actually having mental breakdowns, then they wanted to force them into having one so they could take pictures to make a lot of money.’
She retreated, avoiding paparazzi and finding security in privacy. ‘In a funny way, I think the sanest thing I ever did was to run away from that,’ she says.
Through hard work and by keeping a low profile and a so-called ‘scruffy’ everyday style, she has found new inner calm. ‘I don’t get anxiety in the same way as I did,’ she says. ‘It wasn’t the red carpet as much as it was the paparazzi, and I don’t get followed the way I did, so I have less anxiety about that.’ She also had therapy. ‘I was incredibly lucky that I could afford to get help when I needed to and I’m very aware that that’s not the case for everybody,’ she explains. ‘In my personal opinion, mental health should be ring- fenced inside the National Health Service.’
As a child, Keira famously decided that she wanted to act and asked her parents to find her an agent. She would be more hesitant, she admits, if her own children had such a request. ‘I wouldn’t encourage it,’ she says. ‘Equally, if that’s what they wanted to do, I would be completely supportive.’
They certainly couldn’t be in safer hands. In two decades, she must have walked a thousand red carpets. Now, though, she seems to have found a way to do it at her own pace, and in her own undeniable style.
READ MORE: The First Non-White Miss World On The Story Behind Misbehaviour