Keira Knightley

We have barely seen her in five or six important films and yet no one in their right mind would say that she is not one of the most promising actresses of the moment. With her it happens as with the big stars, her screen presence obscures the rest of the cast. Her fine face, her tiny nose and that very white smile of an innocent girl that appears to the minimum behind her long lips did not leave anyone indifferent in I want to be like Beckham , the British film that brought her out of anonymity. Neither the female protagonist nor the handsome man on duty were up to her. Keira ceased to be “ipso facto” a stranger and her name quickly joined the cast of the great Hollywood blockbusters.

And it’s not exactly that this 22-year-old girl came out of nowhere. She was born on March 26, 1985 in Teddington, Middlesex (England), she very soon wanted to follow the path of her parents. Both she and her older brother, Caleb, breathed the aroma of Shakespeare and other colleagues from their earliest childhood, since her father, Will Knightley, is an active theater actor and her mother, Sharman MacDonald, is a playwright. From the age of three, little Keira felt her interpretive call and insistently asked her surprised parents to assign her an agent! “She wanted to be part of that fantasy world,” explains the actress. And although she had to wait, there was no time for her to take off her little girl’s overalls either: at six years old she already had someone to represent her. Thanks to her parents’ contacts, she first appeared in the television episode Royal Celebration (1993). Keira was only eight years old and she had already managed to take the first step. After him, she continued her early career in the romantic drama The Village Affair (1994), with Jeremy Northam in the cast, and the following year she had a brief appearance in the thrillerInnocent Lies , with Stephen Dorff . Keira strove to overcome the dyslexia that she suffered from and she also began to receive dance classes. This is how things were when, after two small jobs for British television (the family Treasure Seekers , 1996; and Coming Home , 1998, together with none other than Peter O’Toole), someone of great importance noticed the resemblance between them. young actress had with another child prodigy, Natalie Portman . That physical resemblance was the cause of her appearing in nothing more and nothing less than the highly anticipated at that time The Phantom Menace. Her presence was certainly fleeting, playing Sabé, the lady who impersonated Queen Amidala-Portman. But for her it must have been an extraordinary experience, since the galactic saga was one of her favorite adventures. And, she says, she still likes to be compared to Natalie.

From that moment his roles grew in importance. In 1999 she participated in Oliver Twist , a British series of notable quality, and the following year she obtained her first leading role in The Princess of Sherwood , where Keira embodied a kind of female version of Robin Hood. And you can see that warrior girls suit her, because in that film she had an adventurous profile in the style of the Guinevere that she would later embody in King Arthur . In 2001 she teamed up with Thora Birch in the horror thriller The Hole , which had an interesting reception in theaters. She then worked on two short films, before in 2002 she played Juliette Paxton in I Want To Be Like Beckham .and your life will change forever. Still that year, she did some outstanding roles, like that of Lara Antipova in the television series Dr. Zhivago (2002), or that of the junkie Louise in Pure , a fantastic and hard drama about drug addiction.

But his pedigree had already been required by the highest levels of Hollywood. And so, she was charming as Elizabeth Swann from Pirates of the Caribbean (2003). Keira, who admires Katharine Hepburn and Vivien Leigh above all actresses – “Not because of her skill, but because of her perseverance” – brought that air of classic actresses, adventurous and romantic, that the actress needed. character of her Producer Jerry Bruckheimer said of her that “she is extremely natural and beautiful. She’s a girl until the camera starts rolling. At that point she becomes an adult.” Following her success, she headed to her beloved London – “the more time I spend away, the more I miss my city” – to shoot the romantic Love Actually .(2003), where she beamed as the newlywed Juliet. And then Bruckheimer called her to be her Guinevere in King Arthur (2004).

Already converted into a media star, Keira could choose her roles with care, in which there is usually a strange mix between the girls to take up arms and the damsels of the period. So she shot in 2005 The Jacket , a mediocre thriller with Adrien Brody , and the lively biopic of a bounty hunter in Domino , directed by Tony Scott . In 2006 she changed third to play the literary Isobel Bennett, protagonist of the costumbrista Pride and prejudice , based on the immortal novel by Jane Austen . After her, after closing the marine adventures with Jack Sparrow and Bill Turner, she in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest andPirates of the Caribbean: At the End of the World , where she was more seasoned than ever, the actress has once again become a damsel of the mid-20th century with her role as Cecilia Tallis in Atonement , a great film based on the novel of the same name by Ian McEwan . And then we will see her in the hyperromantic Seda , also a literary adaptation of Alessandro Baricco ‘s story . She has yet to release the historical drama The Duchess and the World War II film The Edge of Love