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Keira Knightley: I Experienced ‘Rape Speak’ From Stalkers After Breakout Films

The actress reflected on the “big cost” of overnight fame as a teen.

Keira Knightley recalled to the Los Angeles Times how she was subjected to stalkers who told her “you wanted this,” and “this is what you deserve” as a teen, after the success of 2002’s Bend It Like Beckham and 2003’s Pirates of the Caribbean made her famous at 18 years old. “It was rape speak,” Knightley said in the new interview. “They very specifically meant I wanted to be stalked by men,” she continued. “Whether that was stalking because somebody was mentally ill, or because people were earning money from it—it felt the same to me. It was a brutal time to be a young woman in the public eye.” Knightley has been promoting her new Netflix series Black Doves, in which she plays an assassin and mother with a double-life, but took some time to reflect on that five-year period from 17 to 22 when she was at the height of her fame. “I’m never going to have that kind of success again,” she said, but “It totally set me up for life. Did it come at a cost? Yes, it did. It came at a big cost.”