Keira Knightley Reveals She Suffered Post Traumatic Stress Following Her Rapid Rise To Fame
Keira Knightley is one of the best established British actresses in Hollywood. With more than 50 films on her resume and two Oscar nominations for her performances in Pride and Prejudice (2005) and Unraveling the Enigma (2014), the Teddington (southwest London) native seems to have an idyllic career. However, her rapid rise to fame was much more complex than it seems.
In an interview on the podcast Awards Chatter of the American magazine The Hollywood Reporter, rescued by People magazine, the 33-year-old actress opens up about her struggle with fame, the paparazzi and the anxiety problems that both brought her. "[The media] gave a lot of money for pictures of women falling apart," she says Knightley. In her opinion, since the breakup of Britney Spears before the eyes of the world in 2007, the paparazzi began to look for this type of news, which created a great fervor in the media.
"[The media] wanted you to be sexy, but they wanted to punish you for that sexuality. If you didn't break down in front of them, then it was worth making you break so you would fall apart in front of them," says the model about the hordes of photographers. who followed her at the height of her career in 2007.
"Suddenly there was a level of violence that was in the air, which was not something you could react to very well. I've always had a knack for giving shit, and it was so obvious that they wanted me to break. and I thought: 'I'm not going to give them what they want,' says the protagonist of Anna Karenina. "I felt like I was going to war every time she left the house," she adds.
Knightley was 22 years old in 2007 and was promoting two of the films that would catapult her career: Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End and Atonement. Under pressure from her sudden success, the actress inevitably snapped, but she did so away from the cameras. "I had a mental breakdown at 22, so I took a year off and was diagnosed with PTSD because of all of that," she admits.
"I got deep into therapy and [a therapist] told me, 'That's amazing. I usually have patients who think people are talking about them and they're being persecuted, when they're not. You're the first person I've ever seen!' that's really happening to him!" Knightley says with a laugh.
The actress took advantage of her time away from filming to travel, but she had to cut her break short after being nominated for a BAFTA and a Golden Globe for her performance as Cecilia Tallis in Atonement. The Brit recalls that at the time she was struggling with "major panic attacks" and that she had to resort to hypnotherapy in order to attend the British Academy Film Awards ceremony.
Those days the actress is promoting her new project Collette, in which she plays the novelist of the same name who was pressured by her husband to write books on his behalf, and in addition, the film The Nutcracker is expected to premiere this year and the four kingdoms.
