Fans have been left in disbelief after learning how old Kiera Knightley was when she appeared in the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie - and let's just say, she managed to accomplish more than a lot of us did at that age.
The actress has previously opened up about her time on the set of the iconic franchise, telling Variety that she was left traumatized after the entire experience catapulted her to an entirely new level of fame.
"I'm not an extrovert, so I found that level of scrutiny and that level of fame really hard," she said. "It was an age where you are becoming, you haven’t become, and you need to make mistakes. It’s a very precarious age, particularly for women."
She stated that while it was "traumatic", "it set up the rest of [her] career."
"So looking back, would I do anything different? No, I wouldn't because I'm unbelievably lucky now, and my career is in a place where I really enjoy it, and I have a level of fame that's much less intense," she continued. "I can deal with it now, and that's great.
"But at the time, it was not so great, and took many years of therapy to figure it out," she added.
Fans were shocked to discover that Knightley was only 17 when she took on the role of Elizabeth Swann alongside Johnny Depp, who was around 39, and Orlando Bloom, who was 26.
Depp played Captain Jack Sparrow and Bloom starred as Will Turner, Swann’s love interest.
“Keira Knightley being like 17 when she filmed pirates of the caribbean shakes me to my core,” wrote one user on X, while another added: “I didn’t realize she was that young when she filmed it. Dang.”
A third pointed out: “This really just impresses upon me how f****** talented she is as an actress. Like god damn girl you haven’t even been alive long enough to have this type of range.”
However, others weren’t as impressed.
“It’s a fact that haunts me and will continue to haunt me until I die.”
“She really killed that role and brought a lot of maturity and poise to it, but the way she was so overtly sexualized in it was such a big yikes,” another commented in the thread.
And this is something Knightley, who is now 39, also pointed out in a previous interview with Variety.
“[Elizabeth Swann] was the object of everybody’s lust,” the actress told the outlet. “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.”
Knightley went on to state that she felt “very constrained” in the role.
“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,” she added.
Elsewhere, she went on to state that despite the impressive list of movies she went on to do, including Love Actually, Pride and Prejudice, and Atonement, she was forced to take a step back from her career due to burnout.
“I was incredibly hard on myself,” Knightley said about that period of her career. “I was never good enough. I was utterly single-minded. I was so ambitious. I was so driven. I was always trying to get better and better and improve, which is an exhausting way to live your life. Exhausting.
"I am in awe of my 22-year-old self, because I’d like a bit more of her back. And it’s only by not being like that any longer that I realize how extraordinary it was.
“But it does have a cost,” she added, referring to the burnout.
The star has now shifted her focus to a slightly quieter life looking after her family and working on smaller big-screen roles.
