Keira Knightley Quotes

The highest percentage of England's top jobs are filled by graduates from about two different universities.

I think that there's absolutely no point trying to force your body to be anything than what it is. I think that when you see people who are really pushing themselves to terrifying lengths to achieve what is perceived as being beautiful today, then that's just terrifying, it's really terrifying.

I like to do the pictures before people get too self-conscious. I like to be spontaneous and get a shot before the subject thinks too much about it.

In L.A., I'm twice the size - height and everything else - of most of the other actresses who are going for an audition.

You have to learn the rules to be able to know how to break them.

I think everybody has the right to a private life.

I tried college for three months but I was desperately unhappy. I just wanted to perform. I was getting straight As but I had no friends and cried every day.

I went through voice coaching. I was absolutely terrified. I thought my knees were going to buckle, and the first couple of takes I sounded like a pubescent boy. I didn't realise I was going to have to do it live.

Half of my mum's family is Welsh. I remember when I was a kid she used to read to me, and witches and wizards in books always had a Welsh accent, so I guess I took it from that really.

You live with a writer [a mother], and you grow up with their words, their kind of fantasies, and I'd pretty much seen every single one of her plays, and been in a lot of rehearsal rooms, so it felt very natural and easy. It was lovely to get an opportunity to do that professionally as well.

I wasn't allowed to do commercials. I wasn't allowed to do TV series. I wasn't allowed to do soaps or basically anything that would mean I missed too much school.

I find it quite difficult on studio films because there are so many different executives and things like that that you have to go through, so very often getting that definitive opinion is actually quite difficult.

The thing about great fictional characters from literature, and the reason that they're constantly turned into characters in movies, is that they completely speak to what makes people human. They're full of flaws as much as they are full of heroics. I think the reason that people love them and hate them so much is because, in some way, they always see a mirror of themselves in them, and you can always understand them on some level. Sometimes it's a terrifyingly dark mirror that's held up.

I am a slow reader. I always loved words, which is a strange thing given that I couldn't actually read them

I think it doesn't matter where you're from, we all need a bit of romance.

In the movie, you're moving, you have personality, you don't have to be great looking.

It's good to know that other people think differently, and that's what makes the characters interesting.

I don't have a problem with my body. I'm not just going to strip off all my clothing, but if the part calls for it and I don't think there's any way round, I'm absolutely fine.

It's an interesting thing when you discover something about yourself. To go: 'Wow, I'm not the person I thought I was. I'm in the middle of something and I can't actually deal with it.'

I've got a lot of experience with anorexia - my grandmother and great-grandmother suffered from it, and I had a lot of friends at school who suffered from it. I know it's not something to be taken lightly and I don't.

The celebrity thing's completely crazy. I think I just have to move away or give it up altogether. I couldn't have kids in the situation I'm in now. But I could just do something else. That's probably what's going to happen. I made a decision very recently that I want a life instead.

I don't read my reviews. Unless I'm unfortunate enough to catch something by accident, which happens, and it's always a bad review. Always, it's amazing. I will be sitting in a café, and I will open a random paper right to the page of the review.... And then you're sucked in and go home and never want to go out again.

You already feel unsure of yourself, and then you see your worst fears in print. It really knocked me - which is why, I think, I was working, working, working, because I was trying to run away from the fact that I thought I couldn't do it.

I totally agree. I hate knowing too much when I'm going to the cinema and watching as a viewer. I don't want to know that the actor has just gone through a divorce. I don't want to know that the person is an alcoholic. It just gets in the way of my pleasure of watching the character on the screen.

I do think that acting is such an unpredictable job, and you're away a lot. If you're dating somebody outside the industry, it can be hard to understand that.

I always find it much easier when there's one person whose vision you're following, as opposed to many people.

If I don't do this film. I'll be acting in corsets for the next 20 years.

I made a conscious decision to live my life the best way I could and that meant to publicise myself as little as possible.

They always pencil in my boobs. I was only angry when they were really droopy. For King Arthur, for a poster, they gave me these really strange droopy tits. I thought, well if you’re going to make me fantasy breasts, at least make perky breasts.

I don't want to deny my femininity. But would I want to be a stay-at-home mother? No. On the other hand, you should be allowed to do that, as should men, without being sneered at.

I've always gravitated towards people who are extreme. Whether its drugs, or kicking down doors. Normally, the people in my life had to escape to get back.

The most important thing in playing any character is not judging.

The whole point for me is to change as much as possible. If I've done one movie, I've done that, move on.

It's very rare to get a film script that has good dialogue. A lot of the time, you spend on film sets really fighting to find out how to say the words.

I'm doing a film now with a lot of guys as well, so at the end of that I will be growing a beard.

It's a tricky one when you're playing somebody who is mad. There's often the big actor's question, if you're playing a part like that: do you take it to be an internalized thing, pull the audience in, or do you go full-out, and kind of present it as quite a shocking thing?

You watch him playing Jack Sparrow, and he's loving it, and he's loving being in that world. He's still excited by it. Sometimes, he'll even say, 'Was that OK?' And I'm thinking, 'You're Johnny Depp man, you know that's OK!' But he doesn't. He's still going to [director] Gore [Verbinski] and asking for help. It's a privilege to see the human side of Johnny. It's really exciting.

Beauty is everywhere. And my photography came naturally without any particular inspirations growing up.

I don't think that you can fake warmth. You can fake lust, jealousy, anger; those are all quite easy. But actual, genuine warmth? I don't think you can fake it.

Bigger films are more difficult because the number of people is so huge.

It's not everyday you get to do a pirate movie, you might as well go for it.

The thing I love about acting is getting to change and look at different people in different lives and do different projects.

I see a pair of shoes I adore, and it doesn't matter if they have them in my size. I buy them anyway.

It's obvious to say you can't please everybody and there are always going to be people who are going to say, I just don't like you. There's nothing I can do about that. I'm aware, probably much more aware than my harshest critic, of what my own problems are with my acting ability. I'm very, very critical of myself, and I don't ever want to not be.

I think women's bodies are a battleground and photography is partly to blame. Our society is so photographic now, it becomes more difficult to see all of those different varieties of shape.

Empathy is the main thing, putting yourself in somebody else's shoes and trying not to judge.

I think quite often when you have a hell of a lot more money and time, as you very much do on a big studio film, you don't necessarily have to make the decisions right there. You can always goback and reshoot it.

Everybody can take a good picture. Everybody is interesting. Everyone has an interesting face. Some people are more difficult or more nervous or more tired. When you do a movie, you have action, you're talking, you're moving. You don't see the camera. Taking a picture with a photographer, you don't talk, it's more difficult than in a movie for your body to relax, to be yourself.