Keira Knightley

Birthday: 22 March, 1985

Birth city: Teddington, England

Height: 5' 7" (170 cm)

Keira Knightley is one of those actresses who comes once in a lifetime and manages to carry poise, wit, charm, and then some. She's the offspring of famed actor Will Knightley and actress-turned-author Sharman MacDonald. She was born on March 22, 1985 in Teddington, England. By the ripe age of three, she asked her parents for an agent. But her parents wanted her to concentrate on her studies, since she struggled in school. She describes herself as a nerdy bookworm, but had trouble on spelling tests and spelling bees.
She followed in her parents’ footsteps quite early, making her film debut at the age of 11 in A Village Affair (1994). By 1999, she appeared in her first Hollywood blockbuster, playing Padmé's double Sabé, in Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999).

She later moved onto other things. In the TV movie, The Princess of Thieves (2001), Keira played the title role of Robin Hood’s daughter Gwyn, who takes on the family business after her father dies. Despite her lack of soccer experience, she was chosen for a lead role in the independent feature Bend It Like Beckham (2002), a movie based on soccer phenom, David Beckham. Along with Parminder Nagra, who played the lead role in the film, Keira trained full time with a coach for three months in order to successfully play a soccer-obsessed teenager. They learned Futebol de Salao -- the Brazilian method of playing soccer and repeated the tricky moves over and over, even practising them at home each night. At one point, when Keira sustained a concussion, the director suggested that they use doubles, but the girls refused, saying they wanted to do the soccer action themselves.

When Bend it Like Beckham was number one in Britain and stayed there for several weeks, it was clear that the film was a hit. It spread its wings across Europe, then was shown in Australia, India and eventually opened in the United States to rave reviews and was proclaimed a sleeper hit in the States. Soon after, Keira landed a lead role in the Hollywood blockbuster, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003) acting alongside Johnny Depp and Orlando Bloom after Jerry Bruckheimer (Pearl Harbor) discovered her in Bend It Like Beckham. He then cast her as Guienevere in the Disney update of King Arthur. POTC went on to conquer the box office by landing at #1, beating out the Arnold Schwartznegger movie Terminator 3 and Legally Blonde 2.
At this moment, Keira is definitely sitting on top of the world. She's definitely one of those actresses that won't go away anytime soon and we can't wait to see what else this witty Brit has in store for us. (Source: www.keira-knightley.org)[Update biography]