NEED TO KNOW
- Keira Knightley is reflecting on her 2006 Oscar nomination for Pride & Prejudice
- The actress was the third-youngest person to ever receive an Academy Award nomination at the time
- Knightley reunited with her costar and on-screen sister Rosamund Pike to discuss Pride & Prejudice upon the film’s 20th anniversary
Keira Knightley is recounting a “confusing” time when she was honored with an Oscar nomination for one film, and critiqued as a “terrible actress” for another.
In an interview with Vanity Fair, published Thursday, June 12, Knightley, 40, recalled receiving an Oscar nomination in 2006 for her performance as Pride & Prejudice’s Elizabeth Bennet. However, at the same time, she was being criticized for her performance in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest.
“Yes, it was pretty big for my career. If people will come up to me, it’ll be about that one,” she told the outlet of portraying the Jane Austen-penned heroine, adding, “Pirates of the Caribbean had already come out, but I think in the public consciousness, I was seen as a terrible actress.”
Amid critiques of her performance in the second Pirates franchise, Knightley recalled a sudden switch in public opinion on her acting abilities. “But I had this phenomenally big success with Pirates. And I think this was the first one that was a phenomenally big success, but was also critically acclaimed.”
The actress continued, “So I remember it coming out maybe the same year, maybe around the same time as Pirates 2. And I got the worst reviews ever for that, and then also being nominated for an Oscar at the same time—it was, in my 21-year-old head, quite confusing.”
Knightley was only 20 when she received her Best Actress Academy Award nomination, which made her the third youngest nominee ever at the time, per Variety.
When Pike mentioned another one of Knightley’s early projects, 2002’s Bend it Like Beckham, the actress said, “I got terrible reviews for it—or at least the ones I remember, or the ones that, in your 17-year-old brain, actually sink in. Of course, it’s only the ones that are negative. So I think it was the first time that it had been unequivocally positive, right?”
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Pride & Prejudice, directed by Joe Wright, was re-released in theaters in honor of the film’s 20th anniversary in April. The film’s sweeping cinematography of the bucolic English countryside and the romantic chemistry between Knightley and Matthew McFadyen’s Mr. Darcy continue to earn the film adaptation of the 1813 novel of the same name a lasting legacy.
“I just remember being part of something that felt magical,” Pike recalled of the film.
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