Sadly it's not uncommon for women who hit the peak of their fame in the early oughts, when intrusive paparazzi culture was rife, to speak about how the experience ruined their mental health—and Keira Knightley is no exception, opening up about how she managed to keep a breakdown out of the public eye.
In a new interview, she recalled how after her profile grew as a young actor, she'd regularly have men camped outside her home, trying to get a photograph of her doing, well, pretty much anything. As a result, she tried to split her time between two homes and began to wear the same couple of outfits on rotation (knowing that a paparazzi photo of her in the same clothing as the day before wouldn't be worth half as much).
“I did go mad,” Keira shares in a new interview with The Times. “Believe me. I went mad. I just managed to hide it.”
“[These men would shout] ‘whore,’ ‘slut’ sometimes. Particularly if I was with someone—a boyfriend, my brother, or my dad. They were trying to get a reaction out of them—provoking people into punching them, so they could sue.”
The Black Doves star explains that this behavior over time left her feeling trapped and chipped away at her mental health.
“You start worrying you're going mad, like, ‘Were they really following me, or was I imagining it?’ So then you'd buy all the papers—and every single time I was right,” she shares. “There would be a photo. Even if I hadn’t actually seen them. Because you’re in a hyper-vigilant state.”
Keira adds that her feelings of paranoia took years to subside, with the experience prompting her to choose smaller more intimate theatre roles over Hollywood blockbusters.
Thankfully, she's now in a much better place and has just released a new children's book, I Love You Just The Same, which she has both written and illustrated herself, as well as starring in Netflix thriller, The Woman in Cabin 10.
