Before she was even 18 years old, Keira Knightley was already an international star. The actress was cast in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl when she was just 17 years old, and it doesn’t seem like she’s eager to return to the role of Elizabeth Swann.
In speaking with The Times, she explained that playing Elizabeth was not as fun as it may have seemed. “I had quite an entrance into adult life, an extreme landing because of the experience of fame at a very early age,” the actress explained. “There’s a funny place where women are meant to sit, publicly, and I never felt comfortable with that. It was a big jolt.”
“[Elizabeth Swann] was the object of everybody’s lust,” she added. “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 experience of making the movies is not one she’s eager to revisit, and she was very clear that she doesn’t plan to return for any sort of reboot.
“The hours are insane. It’s years of your life, you have no control over where you’re filming, how long you’re filming, what you’re filming,” the actress says. On top of the hours, she also explained that she’s chosen to prioritize her family, including her two children. “I couldn’t go job to job [abroad] now,” Knightley explained. “I wouldn’t be in any way fair to them, and I wouldn’t want to. I’ve chosen to have children, I want to bring them up, so I’ve had to take a major step back.”
