Keira Knightley says she felt "caged in" after Pirates Of The Caribbean role
Keira Knightley recalled "trying to break out" of similar roles following her breakout performance as Elizabeth Swann in the hit Disney franchise
While Keira Knightley’s breakout role first came about with soccer hit Bend It Like Beckham, the Oscar-nominated actor fully rose to global fame in Disney’s theme park-turned-swashbuckling adventure film Pirates Of The Caribbean: The Curse Of The Black Pearl. Though her portrayal of independent heroine Elizabeth Swann made her a household name in Hollywood, Knightley recalled feeling “very stuck” and “constrained” after the role, as revealed in a recent interview with Harper’s Bazaar UK.
“She was the object of everybody’s lust,” said Knightley, speaking about her character in the Pirates Of The Caribbean franchise. “Not that she doesn’t have a lot of fight in her. But it was interesting coming from being really tomboyish to getting projected as quite the opposite.”
She continued, “I felt very constrained. I felt very stuck. So the roles afterward were about trying to break out of that.”
Among those post-2003 roles for Knightley are the 2005 adaptation of Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice and the melancholic Atonement, with the former earning her an Oscar nomination for Best Actress in a Leading Role. Even with the critical and box office success of both projects, Knightley still considered that time period from 2003 to 2008 as “a very tricky five-year window,” to which she felt “quite powerless.”