When it comes to garnering sympathy, Keira Knightley might want to reconsider the dicey strategy of posing for the cover of a fashion magazine while lamenting the twin torments of fame and twigginess. In a sit-down with Elle UK, the affable but self-image issue-plagued actress says being in the spotlight is fraught with pressure, especially when it comes to the scrutiny over her lithe figure. "The celebrity thing's completely crazy", she complains. "I think I just have to move away or give it up altogether". Among the problems of being in the public eye: Knightley says she was "completely devastated" when she learned pictures of her flat-as-a-pancake stomach and jutting sternum were being used as thinspiration on websites promoting eating disorders and in articles about scrawny starlets. "Basically, my body type is naturally thin," explains Keira, 22, who, appropriately enough, is featured on the front of the magazine's "Body" issue. "There is nothing I can do about it."
She says photos of her looking super-slim in a bikini from earlier this year were snapped after the "grueling" "Pirates of the Caribbean" shoot, which required her to film in "searing temperatures" while "wearing a wetsuit underneath a load of corsets, fighting with heavy weights in the water". Can you imagine a more advanced cardio workout than that done hour after hour? Still, says Keira, "When all that blew up, I felt terrible. It appeared as if I were promoting something when I absolutely was not. I am thin because that's what I am, and I was thinner at that point because of the work I do. Nothing else".
According to the star, "I took it very seriously. I went to the doctor to be checked out and asked him what I could do to put on weight. He told me that for someone of my body type to get to a size 12, I would have to eat a lot of shit food, stop exercising and drink loads". Sighs Knightley, "I don't want to have to go around eating crap and being really unhealthy in order for people to stop having a go at me". Of course, this time last year, she appeared to be following the doctor's orders, telling Elle, "I'm trying to go, 'Fuck it' and have bowls of pasta or whatever makes me happy. I haven't been to the gym since January and I'm drinking about half a bottle of wine a night". She also admitted to coveting the slim but shapely (read: stacked) frames of Scarlett Johansson and Kate Winslet, saying yearningly, "That kind of decadent flesh is absolutely beautiful. How sexy is that on a woman?" and Keira currently wishes she "had a body like Monica Bellucci, which is just so womanly, female and curvy".
Keira, who is stumping for the soon-to-be-released "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End," also reveals her recent self-imposed breather from the big screen was health-related. "I'd got to a body breakdown", she confesses to the magazine. "I felt I had permanent jet lag and couldn't mentally or physically adjust. I had a flat I'd bought but never lived in, friends I loved but never got to see. I just wanted to have a bit of a normal life". And she drops more than a few hints that she eventually hopes to achieve "a normal life" permanently. "I couldn't have kids in the situation I'm in now," says Keira, who remains hot and heavy with her "Pride & Prejudice" co-star Rupert Friend. "Acting was the only thing I ever wanted to do. But, to be honest, I can see myself in five years or whatever just giving the whole thing up". She adds, in a bit of awkward phrasing given her apparent inability to pack on the pounds, "I'm just not so hungry any more. I made a decision very recently that I want a life instead". That revelation came during a 10-day trek to the Himalayas, where "no one knew me or cared what films I'd been in", she recalls wistfully. "I got to have some total peace and balance and see myself as a tiny insignificant speck -- something I really needed". These days, she skips the club scene in favor of hanging out with pals, although once again she owns up to wishing she could be more like someone else, this time the "fabulous" Sienna Miller, her co-star in the forthcoming "The Best Time of Our Lives". "When I talk to her," says Keira, "I hope a bit of her party personality will rub off on me, but it never does".
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