14 DAY TRIAL // Keira Knightley has always been very frank in interviews but, even by her standards, her latest, with Allure magazine, is an eye-opener. One of the topics up for discussion: those rumors that she had / has anorexia.
Back when she was still on board Disney’s “Pirates of the Caribbean” franchise, Keira would often make headlines in the tabloids because of her waifish frame which, many believed, was down to severe dieting and most likely an eating disorder as well.
That was never the case, she tells Allure. Nevertheless, reading such things did make her wonder about her health, to the point where she even started to believe there might be something wrong with her.
“The anorexic stuff — all of that — it’s always going to have an impact, so I think it did hit pretty hard. Because you go, ‘Oh, maybe that’s right!’” Keira says.
“I knew I wasn’t anorexic, but maybe my body is somehow not right. Or my face is not right. Or the way I speak is not right. When you’re going through a period where you’re really getting a lot of criticism, you go, ‘Maybe all this is right! You just kind of want to hide it all’,” she adds.
In the same interview, Knightley identifies as a “feminist” even though she too occasionally objectifies herself. She also talks about the kind of pressure the movie industry is putting on its stars, especially the women.
Aging in Hollywood is a very tricky thing, Keira muses. She might still be young and incredibly pretty, but she knows that her “expiration date” will come: in the meantime, though, she’s determined to make the most of it.
Keira also says she’s quite amused by the amount of retouching that goes into promotional pictures: having always had small breasts, she’s always surprised to see how “enhanced” she looks in final shots.
“They always pencil in my [breasts]. I was only angry when they were really, really droopy. For [2004 flick] ‘King Arthur,’ for a poster, they gave me these really strange droopy [breasts]. I thought, ‘Well, if you’re going to make me fantasy breasts, at least make perky breasts’,” she tells the mag.
On the same note, Keira says that having an almost boyish figure is the reason she has no problem with showing some skin on camera: because her cleavage is small, she figures “people really aren’t that interested.”