When it comes to celebrities in the limelight, few are as honest as Keira Knightley. Every interview with the Oscar-nominated actress - star of Bend It Like Beckham, Love Actually, Pride & Prejudice and Atonement - seems to feature a nugget of truth, something so rarely seen in the polished, media-trained, soundbite-filled world of the celebrity profile. Now, she's being frank yet again, this time about how lockdown and childcare issues led to her giving up a plum role.
'I was meant to be doing a TV show in September for four or five months,' she tells this months Harper's Bazaar. 'But I couldn’t make it work with lockdowns and childcare. I was very lucky to be able, financially, to make that decision, so it felt like it was a choice, but it was a crap choice.'
These comments follow reports from last year hat Keira had pulled out of the lead role of Cora in the forthcoming television adaptation of The Essex Serpent. A representative came forward with two words frequently seen in such comments: 'family reasons.' They could have left it there: so many of Keira's peers do. But they continued: Keira's departure from the programme came down to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, and her realisation that 'there wasn't a comfortable scenario for Keira that could be put in place for an extended period of childcare required for the four-and-a-half-month production'.
Honestly, we'll take any chance we can to applaud Keira's repeated insistence on being as honest as she can be when it comes to motherhood and how it's made easier by great wealth. Few celebrities admit to using paid childcare - even though the huge majority to do - perhaps in fear of judgment. But Keira is saying that she and her husband need help with her two kids, that she has the money to afford that help, and that she was not willing to compromise the happiness of herself, her children and, indeed, a nanny for the role. There would, after all, most likely have to be some form of social bubbling that would, quite possibly, mean that Keira would have to stay away from her children for a great length of time, or perhaps keep the nanny away from his or her own friends and family. It doesn't sound worth it, and it's amazing to hear Keira express that.
We're not surprised though. She has been so honest about having help before. 'I'm super lucky, I can afford child care', she said in 2018 when asked about how she handled being a working mum. 'I have a wonderful nanny that has travelled with us as well. When she's there, I feel completely safe that Edie is good. And my mum, whenever my husband can't be there, has flown to wherever we are. They say it takes a village to raise a child - it takes a village to keep a woman at work as well. But if that's where she should be then everybody is very supportive and it's possible.'
She's also been honest about her reaction to her body post motherhood, her vaginal tearing in labour, changing nappies. She has described the first months of her first child's life as a 'memory hole of sleeplessness and hormones and wee and vomit and milk and mastitis.' She has admitted to not having time to brush her hair. Her issues with Disney princess fairytales. She has mocked the Photoshopping of her own breasts on film posters. Her own acting in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. Her problems at school. Her work in a male dominated industry.
She has never done anything but be frank, and it's hugely refreshing. It tells the women at home, watching her films, seeing her in the magazines, that she is not as godly as she looks in the Chanel adverts. She is beautiful and successful, yes, but she has help, she experiences pain, she faces turmoil. Every time she opens her mouth and dispels a myth of perfection, she makes someone feel a little relieved that they are not the only ones. I can't think of anyone who does this with the regularity of Keira Knightley.
So, thank you Keira. You don't mind telling the world that you need help, that you pay for it, that you're not always glamorous and gorgeous. We might all feel exponentially better if your peers followed suit.
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