On screen, Knightley, 18, is so beautiful she can make you lose track of which movie you’re watching–but it’s her moxie that pulls you back. As Juliet, the soccer-mad teen in “Bend It Like Beckham,” Knightley was exuberant and utterly convincing. (Of course, as it turns out, she is a soccer-mad teen.) And in “Pirates,” opposite Orlando Bloom, she took an underwritten, damsel-in-distress character and turned her into a full-blooded, damsel-doing-just-fine-thank-you. While filming “King Arthur” in Ireland, Knightley’s sword work has been so convincing that director Antoine Fuqua has dumped her stunt double. “He said to me, ‘You don’t need it. You’re a bad-a–’.” Knightley beams. This is clearly the coolest compliment she’s ever received.
It’s certainly more flattering than her prissy nickname in the London tabloids: English Rose. The term, says Gurinder Chadha, who directed Knightley in her breakthrough role in “Beckham,” suggests “someone who blushes. But Keira is feisty and outspoken. She’s not retiring.” She never has been. As a child growing up in the suburbs of London, Knightley got so jealous when agents called for her TV-actor father and playwright mother that she demanded an agent of her own. She was 3. They gave in when she was 6. Now, when she’s in Hollywood during soccer season, she’ll get up at 6:30 a.m.–not to do Pilates, but to watch her beloved West Ham soccer club at the only bar in Santa Monica willing to air its matches.
In 2004, while she awaits “King Arthur’s” arrival in theaters, Knightley will be “nice and busy” working with some major talent. First up is the period romance “Tulip Fever,” costarring Jude Law, from writer Tom Stoppard and director John Madden–the team behind “Shakespeare in Love.” Then she’ll star alongside Oscar winner Adrien Brody in “The Jacket,” a gulf-war drama produced by George Clooney and Steven Soderbergh. Pretty good company for someone who still keeps a copy of a video titled “Acting for Film” in her “King Arthur” trailer. When a reporter notices it on her table, she doesn’t miss a beat. “Oh, that’s for a friend,” she says ironically, making quotation marks in the air. “You know–‘a friend’.” Keira, your “friend” is doing just fine.
