KEY POINTS:
There are some interviews that are difficult to sit through - not because the movie star is off-putting, arrogant or boring, but in a group interview situation the behaviour of the other journalists can make you ever so slightly nauseous.
And so it was with Keira Knightley.
With
the bearing of a ballerina, crisp diction and startling beauty - the male journalists in the room who moments before she walked in seemed tough, jaded - so over this whole movie promotion thing - suddenly were transformed into school girls.
They giggled at her asides, they blushed like maiden aunts when she swore, and they didn't dare ask the questions that may alarm her ("Keira, do you have an eating disorder?"). Instead, one older gent asked her how many pairs of shoes she had, while another stared agog and asked her about her favourite football team, and another praised her for her charity work (she auctioned a dress she wore to the Oscars with the proceeds going to Oxfam).
It was a relief then, when she didn't engage in the sycophantic role-playing that is part of film promotion these days - the pretence that every question is insightful, that the journalist opposite really is the most charming, intelligent person on earth, and quite possibly we could all be best friends if it weren't for such demanding filming schedules.
Instead Keira Knightley was haughty, sharp, and at 22, not afraid of verbally kicking in the balls journalists twice her age.
When asked by a leering journalist about, you know, "getting your gear off love" (Knightley first appeared naked aged 15 in a thriller called Hole, and more recently was starkers on the cover of Vanity Fair with Scarlett Johansson), she was more than his match.
Journalist: "In Silk I hear you are appearing half-naked at some point, is that right?"
Knightley: "What?"
Journalist: "Err sorry, in Silk . . "
Knightley: "Silk!"
Journalist: "I read ... "
Knightley interjects in that posh, quite intimidating voice: "Have you read the book?"
"Well, I just read that you might ... " (Other journalists in the room are squirming in an "Er, pull out now mate" way.)
Knightley - sharper and slowly: "Have you read the book?"
Journalist: "No."
Knightley: "Well in the book there are several sex scenes."
Journalist: "Okay."
Knightley: "So it's an adaptation that's very true to the book."
Pause.
Knightley: "I mean, Jesus Christ, it's not like I haven't taken my clothes off before!"
Journalist: "I was just going to ask if you are comfortable about it ... "
Knightley: "People will start paying me to keep my clothes on. No, I don't have a problem with it. I've never had a problem with it. I don't believe in censorship. So I never think I have done anything wrong. I suppose I am very European in my feelings towards my body."
So there.
In London promoting the third Pirates of the Caribbean movie, it's clear the young actress has a remarkably strong sense of self.
In person she has chocolate brown, shoulder-length hair and skin the colour of milk. She looks lean and healthy - less emaciated actress, more sleek greyhound. In person she is not as orange as she appears in the promotional pictures for Pirates where she looks like she has been excessively spray-tanned.
Knightley is currently riding high as the Brit Pack's queen of Hollywood. Not only has she gained a legion of fans in the Pirates movies, but she has interspersed them with art house, riskier ventures and critically acclaimed classics such as Pride and Prejudice (for which she received an Oscar nomination).
While contemporaries such as Sienna Miller are still floundering around looking for the right role, Knightley is already a veteran of a wide range of television and film parts.
Born in London in 1985 to an acting family (her father is jobbing actor Will Knightley), she started her career as a child actor appearing in shows such as The Bill. However, it wasn't until the 2002 indie hit Bend it Like Beckham that people started taking notice of her. She was an interesting choice for the role - almost too feminine, willowy and gorgeous to be believable as the tomboy soccer player.
She was more aptly cast in Love Actually as the English rose who is the focus of a painful unrequited love. Many of her memorable scenes in that film are video footage of her looking lovely: Keira wearing a pretty dress, Keira dancing, Keira waving goodbye, while the man who desired her sat passive and yearning before all that unattainable beauty.
So it seems in real life that we can't get enough banal shots of this lovely girl.
The British tabloids are full of pictures of her doing mundane things - just being Keira - going for a walk, buying a latte or lying in the park with her boyfriend Rupert Friend. It is as if we are the unrequited boy in Love Actually who is transfixed by her image.
Put that to Knightley - ask her how she feels about the public's appetite for seeing all those photos of her - and the steel in the girl comes out again.
She fixes me with a fairly scary stare when I asked if she minds the paparazzi and says: "Legally I don't have a choice about it; I have to deal with it. I think ... that it is sick.
"I think the pressures put on [young] women of a very vulnerable group are huge.
"But indeed, its not about what people say or what the pictures look at, it's about a young woman being followed around by five men who could be anyone. You have no way of telling who they are - if they're legitimate photographers or if they're rapists. It's totally terrifying and I don't think that it's right - I think that that's very wrong. I don't necessarily have a good level of anonymity in London - it's pretty much the same everywhere. I haven't really found it better or worse in any other city."
The Pirates series more than any other film has extended the reach of her global recognition.
Their appeal is basic: they are good, old-fashioned adventure films, appealing to both kids and adults alike, and each has been more successful than the last.
But they also sound like a nightmare to shoot. Some of it was done with a blue screen, which Knightley found difficult ("It is slightly ridiculous when you suddenly go 'ohhh I'm meant to be really frightened of him' and it's Bill Nighy in his skinny grey suit").
Shooting on location also sounded tough:
"The last six weeks were in torrential rain. We had to wear wetsuits and do intense fight scenes running uphill. I was training non-stop on a cross trainer every night just trying to get my cardiovascular up."
Coming up is Silk, an adaptation of Ian McEwan's Atonement, and a part in the Dylan Thomas biopic: The Best Time of Our Lives.
The screen writer on that one is Keira's mum, Sharman Macdonald.
Knightley is excited about working with her mum. "The pressure was really on her to deliver a really great script and she totally, totally lived up to that - it's an absolutely beautiful work."
Knightley has recently had a five-month break from filming where she "needed have a bit of a breather and live in a flat that I actually brought three years ago but never lived in".
She says, "I did absolutely nothing, I walked around, I cooked a lot, I had friends over and we drank very good wine."
Cooking a roast chicken is a favourite pastime, as is creating her own stock and freezing it for risottos and soups later in the week.
A publicist comes in and says our group interview slot is over and Knightley, in the manner of the Julia Roberts character in Notting Hill, will be moving into another suite in this Knightsbridge hotel to go through the whole thing again.
After the interview I wander around for a bit. The publicity machine for Pirates has taken up a whole floor of this hotel. There are makeup artists running around and cables taped to the ground, satellite feeds to Asia, someone shouting "Orlando? Yeah Orlando's almost done!"
I thought about how in the next room someone will ask Knightley about her weight and more journalists will either attack or fawn, and it will be hour after exhausting hour of unreality. Maybe that's where she gets her steeliness from - it's honed in these tedious hours of strangers asking you about everything from your body, to the food you put into it, to your sexual relationships, to your parents.
Then, when she gets home to central London, five or more men will be out of the front of her house - and they'll photograph her living the life she has just spent the day discussing with strangers.
Pushing the button in the lift and escaping to street level to the relative lack of artifice that is Sloane Square, I preferred to think of her at home cooking for her friends in her flat, freezing chicken stock, getting drunk on good red wine and having a laugh at how weird life is.
I think that's the sort of girl she would probably be.
Lowdown
Who: Keira Knightley
Born: March 26 1985, Teddington, Middlesex, England
Key roles: Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999), The Hole (2001), Bend It Like Beckham (2002), Doctor Zhivago (TV, 2002), Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003), Love Actually (2003), King Arthur (2004), The Jacket (2005), Pride & Prejudice (2005), Domino (2005), Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006)
Latest: Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, opened Thursday
