Keira Knightley Reveals People Told Her It Was 'Embarrassing' to Star in Bend It Like Beckham
Bend It Like Beckham made a star out of Keira Knightley — but as she revealed on Wednesday's The Tonight Show, her friends didn't think anyone would ever watch it!
When asked by host Jimmy Fallon about whether she knew the film was going to be a "giant hit," the Silent Night actress, 37, revealed that those close to her thought the opposite.
"I literally remember telling people I was doing it and it's called Bend It Like Beckham, and them going, 'Oh that's really embarrassing,' Knightley admitted. "And they were all like, 'Don't worry. Nobody will see it. It's fine.'"
"No, but it was the idea of it because, you know, women's soccer was not as big back then, and so the idea of the whole thing was sort of ridiculous," she explained.
Despite those conversations, the movie was a hit when it came out in 2002 and has become a beloved feel-good classic.
"It's amazing because it's still the film even today, you know, if someone comes up to talk to me about my work it's that one," Knightley said about the film. "It's so loved. It's amazing."
Knightley revealed earlier this month in an interview with Harper's Bazaar U.K. that she "never felt comfortable" during that period of time as a young teen actress rising to fame.
"There's a funny place where women are meant to sit, publicly, and I never felt comfortable with that. It was a big jolt," she told the outlet, recalling "being judged on what I was projecting" in her films, especially as her Pirates of the Caribbean character Elizabeth Swann.
"She was the object of everybody's lust," Knightley said of Swann, who was romantically entangled with Orlando Bloom's Will Turner throughout the blockbuster series. "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."
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"I felt very constrained. I felt very stuck," the actress added of how the part — and the fame associated with it — affected her. "So the roles afterwards were about trying to break out of that."
Knightley recalled that she "felt like I was caged in" as she rose to fame and described the years after Pirates first released as "a very tricky five-year window." During that time, she released Love Actually (2003), Pride & Prejudice (2005), which earned her an Oscar nomination and Atonement (2007).
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"I was incredibly hard on myself. I was never good enough. I was utterly single-minded. I was so ambitious. I was so driven," Knightley told the publication, adding that she has a much different mindset now that she's raising her two daughters 7-year-old Edie and 3-year-old Delilah with husband James Righton.
"I am in awe of my 22-year-old self, because I'd like a bit more of her back," she said. "And it's only by not being like that any longer that I realize how extraordinary it was. But it does have a cost."
