Keira Knightley, VOGUE Culture

Keira Knightley

VOGUE Culture

Photograph by Mario Testino. Published in Vogue, October 2012.

lthough you wouldn’t know it from her ever-cool, elegant public comportment, the red carpet always gives Keira Knightley the shakes. “It’s the most terrifying thing in the world,” the actress confided to Vogue in 2006. “Well, obviously not the most terrifying thing—but it terrifies me.”^[1]

On screen, Knightley has played it sweet (Pride & Prejudice, The Duchess), sporty (Bend It Like Beckham), and swashbuckling (Pirates of the Caribbean). Off camera, she affects a low-key street style, working a tomboy look in jeans and boots, or going a bit more girlish in vintage. Though not obsessed by fashion, her instincts are stellar.

The whippet-slim brunette doesn’t go in much for trends, and—although movie audiences have grown accustomed to seeing her corseted, beplumed, and bedizened in costume dramas—her personal taste tends toward the more minimal. “I like to see structure,” she told Vogue in 2006. “I like when it’s quite clean.”^[2]

Knightley has been a Vogue favorite for years (starring, for instance, as a designer Dorothy—with the artist Chuck Close as the Man Behind the Curtain—in Annie Leibovitz’s Wizard of Oz portfolio in 2005), she has never aimed to be a fashion icon. “I can’t see myself ever pioneering a style,” she said in 2006, “partly because I want to be different people every day and never want to be myself. So I don’t think I would ever have a style to copy.”^[3]

“Fashion is like putting on armor,”^[4] Knightley has said. And so she girds herself for the fray in chain mail by Chanel, Valentino, Erdem, and Rodarte.

HISTORY

1. 

Keira Christina Knightley born in London to actor Will Knightley and Sharman Macdonald, a Scottish actress turned playwright and screenwriter. Kiera has an older brother, Caleb.

2. 

Asks for an agent at the age of three. “One was always calling the house, and I thought it was really unfair that I didn’t have one, too,”^[5] she later tells Vogue.

3. 

To reward Keira for working hard to correct her dyslexia, her parents fulfill her wish and get her an agent of her own.

4. 

She lands her first gig at age 7: a part in the BBC’s Royal Celebration.

5. 

Becomes obsessed with Emma Thompson after seeing her performance in Much Ado About Nothing.

6. 

At school in Teddington, is captain of her soccer team. (She will later become a supporter of her father’s favorite team, West Ham United.)

7. 

Plays Queen Amidala’s handmaiden and “decoy” in Star Wars: Episode I—The Phantom Menace.

8. 

Lands more acting roles while still a student. (Isn’t yet a fashion plate: “At school I was a grunger—I think I still am. I can’t be that bothered, although I can look at clothes and go, ‘Yes, I completely see how that’s a piece of art,’ ”^[6] she later tells Vogue.). The Hole, her first big film, is released in England in April. She sits for her final exams over the summer, and enrolls at Esher College (a two-year, pre-university school).

9. 

April: Bend It Like Beckham opens in British theaters; she will receive British Newcomer of the Year accolades at the London Film Critics’ Circle Awards for her role. June: Plays a heroin addict in Pure. November: Attracts notice for her performance as Lara in ITV’s retelling of Doctor Zhivago, in which she bares all. “Nudity is something that’s never fazed me,”^[7] she will later say.

10. 

March: Wears a Guinevere dress by Michael Kors to Elton John’s 2003 Academy Awards party. June: Makes her first appearance in Vogue. July: Debuts as Elizabeth Swann in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. She wears her own Miss Sixty jeans with a midriff-exposing Valentino top to the movie’s Disneyland premiere. August: Meets Irish model Jamie Dornan, who will become her boyfriend. November: Stars in Love Actually, which she describes as “just a big, fat love story.”^[8] Appears in her first campaign for the British luxury-goods-maker Asprey, shot by Bruce Weber. December: Wears Temperley to Asprey’s Manhattan store opening.

11. 

Moves from her parents’ home to her own apartment in Hyde Park, which she will share with her brother and his girlfriend. July: Plays Guinevere in King Arthur. October: Wins the Hollywood Film Award for Best Female Breakthrough Actor.

12. 

February: Wears Chanel to the L.A. premiere of The Jacket, a thriller. August: Splits with Dornan. September: Photographed in Roland Mouret’s forties-ish sheath dress at the Toronto film festival. October: Domino (for which she crops her hair to portray a model turned bounty hunter) opens. November: She pairs vintage mink with a red strapless Calvin Klein dress for the New York screening of Pride & Prejudice. (She will receive a Best Actress Oscar nomination for her portrayal of Elizabeth Bennet.) Channeling sixties glamour queens—Sophia Loren and Brigitte Bardot—wows in clingy vintage Hervé Léger at the British Independent Film Awards in London. December: Scores the cover of Vogue and plays Dorothy in the magazine’s Wizard of Oz fashion portfolio. In her profile of the actress, “Some Enchanted Knightley,” Vicki Woods observes, “This is no ‘pretty young actress’ but a great, great beauty. In the flesh, her huge black eyes, dark feathered brows, sweep of jawline, and perfect mouth are gobsmacking.”^[9] The writer also notes that, at this point, Knightley “is not yet committed to her style.”^[10]

13. 

January: Pairs vintage Cartier jewelry with a strapless white Valentino column for the Golden Globes. March: Wears dramatic, wine-colored Vera Wang with vintage Bulgari jewels (originally commissioned by the shah of Iran) to the Oscars. “It was so over-the-top that you felt you could never wear it for anything but the Oscars,” she later says. “I was trying to go subtle, but it’s the Oscars—why would you try and go subtle?”^[11] (Later auctions the dress for charity.) Appears naked on the cover of Vanity Fair with actress Scarlett Johansson and the issue’s guest editor, designer Tom Ford. Celebrates her 21st birthday in London with caviar and Cole Porter tunes at Paper nightclub. April: Chanel announces that Knightley will follow Kate Moss as the face of the Coco Mademoiselle scent. May: She wears a Vivienne Westwood corset dress on the cover of Vogue. Inside, she says, “I would love to be—not to be a style icon, just to be able to say, ‘Yes, this is my style, and this is who I
am.’ ”^[12]

14. 

January: Sues The Daily Mail, which had suggested she was anorexic. When she wins a settlement, matches it and donates the money to a charity for eating disorders. May: Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End is released. June: Knightley sports Balenciaga on Vogue’s cover. The accompanying feature is shot in Masai Mara, Kenya, and includes an image of the actress in a Bottega Veneta dress, bottle-feeding an orphaned baby elephant wrapped in a Louis Vuitton blanket. “My whole staff loves working with Keira because she is an unpretentious, entourage-free, BlackBerry-free young star, and a happy collaborator in the fun and games (and work) of a fashion story,” writes editor in chief Anna Wintour. “She’s the perfect tomboy partner for a June day spent making mischief and looking great doing it.”^[13] Knightley lands on Forbes’s 20 Under 25 list of the Top-Earning Young Superstars, with estimated annual earnings of $9 million in the last year. August: At Atonement’s Venice Film Festival debut, stands out in a bow-tied Chanel dress with sparkling jewels in her hair. Her first print and television ads for Coco Mademoiselle appear. September: Silk, another period love story, opens in limited release. Accessorizes her Rodarte dress with a glittering hair band at the Atonement screening in London. November: Named “Film Actress of the Year” at the Variety Club Showbiz Awards in London. December: Receives a Golden Globe best performance nomination for her work in the drama.

15. 

February: Wears strapless, beaded Valentino to the BAFTA Awards. June: Photographed in Erdem at the London premiere of The Edge of Love, a film about poet Dylan Thomas written by her mother and costarring Sienna Miller. September: Wears Balenciaga for the second time on the cover of Vogue, and tours Berlin with fashion editor Grace Coddington and photographer Mario Testino for the magazine’s “Wanderlust” story, in which she is described as “sleek as a Fassbinder heroine,” exuding “highly stylized glamour.”^[14] Delights critics with her red-carpet fashion choices of Alexis Mabille (at the London screening of The Duchess, based on the true story of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire) and Chanel Haute Couture (for the movie’s Vogue-sponsored opening in New York).

16. 

December: Makes stage debut in The Misanthrope in London’s West End, for which she will receive a Laurence Olivier Awards best supporting actress nomination.

17. 

March: Wears Miu Miu and Erdem, respectively, to the Laurence Olivier Awards nominees’ luncheon and awards ceremony. October: Photographed in Rodarte at a BFI London Film Festival photo call and in Chanel Haute Couture on the Never Let Me Go red carpet. Glams it up in Valentino for the Last Night screening at the Rome Film Festival. November: London Boulevard is released.

18. 

January: Stars in a West End run of Lillian Hellman’s The Children’s Hour. September: Wears a gilded Valentino dress to the Venice Film Festival premiere of A Dangerous Method, in which she plays Sabina Spielrein, Carl Jung’s patient turned protégée.

19. 

May: Announces her engagement to James Righton, vocalist and keyboardist of English band Klaxons. June: Appears on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon in a silver-and-black Valentino dress, to promote Seeking a Friend for the End of the World. October: Dazzles on the cover of Vogue in a Chanel Haute Couture organza column dress and leather gloves, shot by Mario Testino; the accompanying profile—with an haute-couture portfolio featuring Knightley in confections by Dior and Valentino—discusses her much-anticipated starring role in Joe Wright’s costume drama Anna Karenina. Writer Amanda Foreman notes that as Knightley has matured, so has her look: “Her struggle to define her style is over; effortless chic has edged out the bad-girl grunge of black tops, black jeans, black all over.”^[15]

http://www.vogue.com/voguepedia/Keira_Knightley