Keira Knightley opened up about Pirates of the Caribbean role after-effects.
During an interview with Harper’s Bazaar UK, “[Elizabeth] was the object of everybody’s lust, 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.
“I felt very constrained, I felt very stuck, so the roles afterwards were about trying to break out of that.
“I didn’t have a sense of how to articulate it. It very much felt like I was caged in a thing I didn’t understand.”
The Oscar nominee said she had an “extreme landing” into fame which she has “never felt comfortable” with.
“I was incredibly hard on myself, I was never good enough, I was utterly single-minded, I was so ambitious, I was so driven.
“I was always trying to get better and better and improve, which is an exhausting way to life your life. I am in awe of my 22-year-old self, because I’d like a bit more of her back.
“And it’s only by not being like that any longer that I realise how extraordinary it was. There was never an ounce of me that wasn’t going to find a way through.”
In 2003, the 37-year-old starred in the first film, The Curse of the Black Pearl, next to Johnny Depp and Orlando Bloom.