Keira Knightley says that she would “100% … absolutely” discourage her daughter from pursuing an acting career as a child, saying that “teenage years should be done privately.”
In an interview with Elle UK, the 29-year-old said she would not let a teenage daughter take up acting.
“Oh, 100%, I’d absolutely tell her not to. I would 150 million trillion per cent be totally discouraging. Teenage years should be done privately.
“You should be going out and getting unbelievably drunk, getting into ridiculous situations, making mistakes. That’s what that time of life is about and we should do that privately.”
The Hollywood star speaks from experience, having asked for an agent when she was just three years old, starred in a Hollywood blockbuster at 17 and earned an Oscar nomination at 20. She was just 18 when she hit worldwide fame after starring in the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie alongside Orlando Bloom and Johnny Depp.
Despite her strongly-held opinions for her daughter, Knightley says that she does not have any regrets.
“Saying that, I don’t regret it – I wouldn’t do my life any differently, but having lived through it…There was a very long time when [interviewers] were all: ‘Well you’re a sh*t actress and you’re anorexic and people hate you’ which, for a teenager is a very strange thing.”
Knightley has regularly been forced to deny rumours of anorexia and sued The Daily Mail in 2007 for a newspaper story that suggested she was losing too much weight and could be anorexic.
The Elle UK interview with Knightley is the cover story for the magazine’s July issue.
