Old-fashioned girl, up-to-date outlook

When she was in Los Angeles filming “Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl” earlier this year, British actress Keira Knightley was a relative unknown. Upon the teenager’s recent return to the City of Angels, the low-budget “Bend It Like Beckham,” which she shot in England two years ago, is an indie hit, and her image is plastered on billboards all over town promoting the decidedly bigger-ticket Jerry Bruckheimer production inspired by the beloved Disney theme park ride that also features Orlando Bloom and Johnny Depp.

As her mother cheerily welcomes a visitor to their St. Regis hotel suite, Knightley places her copy of “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix” on a cluttered coffee table amid assorted research materials and makeup accessories. The actress then slips off her shoes and folds her frame into the cushy sofa to consider the ways this early flush of fame has colored her impression of the city.

“It feels pretty much the same,” she says, “as I haven’t really been outside to see any of the posters. I was met at the airport by people with pictures of me for me to sign. Which is really a bit strange. A tiny bit exciting, and I think I’d be even more excited if I had not just gotten off an 11-hour flight and spilt coffee all over myself and been asleep for five of those hours so my makeup was all down my cheeks. There were also people outside a restaurant last night, and I don’t know how they knew I was going to be there, as I didn’t even know I was going there. I don’t know how they do it, but it is very, very strange.”

Recently turned 18, Knightley is already something of a show-business veteran, a veritable stage baby even. Her parents -- Will Knightley, a London stage actor, and Sharman MacDonald, an actress turned playwright -- agreed to have a second child if her mother sold a script. Not long after London’s Bush Theater bought “When I Was a Girl, I Used to Scream and Shout,” young Keira was born. Then, at age 3, she announced she wanted an agent of her own to call her as regularly as her parents’ agents phoned them. She began acting during school holidays, mostly small roles such as the one in “Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace,” which she refers to as “a glorified extra.” From there she went on to appear in a handful of other British productions, including “The Hole,” “Bend It Like Beckham” and “Pure,” before playing the role once inhabited by Julie Christie in a BBC adaptation of “Doctor Zhivago.”

More movies coming

Following the release of “Pirates of the Caribbean” she will be seen later this year in “Love, Actually” as part of an ensemble that includes such marquee talent as Hugh Grant, Laura Linney, Colin Firth and Liam Neeson, though her scenes are mostly with the slightly less recognizable names Chiwetel Ejiofor and Andrew Lincoln. She is currently undergoing extensive physical training for her role as Guinevere in “King Arthur,” including boxing, horseback riding and archery, as well as sword, knife and ax fighting.

Jerry Bruckheimer, producer of both “Pirates” and “King Arthur,” first saw Knightley on an audition tape, not in “Beckham” as one might expect -- “I didn’t even know that movie existed, to be honest with you,” he says. He didn’t hesitate to cast her again, even before “Pirates” had opened.

“I think she’s great in our movie and that’s all I care about,” Bruckheimer replies. “Whether ‘Pirates’ succeeds or fails, she’s still a wonderful actress There’s a wholesome quality in her that I like enormously. She’s beautiful in a classic way, she doesn’t have that contemporary look a lot of American girls have. She has a contemporary attitude, but her looks are very old-fashioned.”

Child labor laws in Europe have allowed Knightley to travel and work on her own since she was 16, but U.S. law required that her mother accompany the actress, then still a minor, while shooting “Pirates.” Though she is now legally an adult here as well, she likes the security her mother provides.

“I have to say L.A. is not a place I would ever come to by myself,” says Knightley. “I’m lucky that my mom’s a writer so she can just take her work with her wherever. I think you have to be a very, very, very strong person to be here as an actress, and actually as a woman at all. At the moment I’m not that person and therefore I will be traveling with her.”

Revealing the insecure teenager beneath her diplomatic, professional exterior, she continues, “There’s a lot of pressures, not that anybody says anything or does anything, but there are a lot of pressures to conform to a certain type, to be thin and blond and busty and whatever. I’m a skinny person, and when I’d go into clothes shops, I couldn’t fit into some of the clothes, so there are some ridiculously skinny people here.”

“You have to be very sure of yourself to be able to say, that’s all [bunk] and laugh at it. Although I can do that on the surface, probably if I was here for a long time I would end up on some ridiculous fad diet, bleaching my hair, and I don’t think that’s very healthy. With my mom here I can stay slightly outside of it and look on and giggle at the absurdity of everything. You have to be strong and you have to be pretty worldly. I will learn those things in time, but I haven’t had time to learn them yet.”

The do-your-thing female empowerment idealism embodied by “Beckham” has certainly struck a chord with the Tween demographic, and in a similar way Knightley’s role in “Pirates” puts a modern spin on the classic swashbuckling heroine. Perhaps revealing her jet lag, or media burnout or ordinary teenage awkwardness, the actress begins to respond like so -- “Oh, right, yes, no, I think, well maybe, yeah” -- before regaining her composure.

“I think if you’d made this film 20 years ago, even 10 to 15 years ago, my character would have been a damsel in distress, she would be The Girl, probably tied up a couple of times and get rescued by the boys and not do a lot to save herself,” she says. “The fact this film is made today means that actually we can say, no, sorry, she fights back and gives as good as she gets. Certainly ‘Bend It Like Beckham’ says something similar. Why would you want to be the simpering maiden in the corner when you could be hitting people in the head?”

A tomboy beanpole

An early American review of “Beckham” referred to the actress as the “sexiest tomboy beanpole on the planet,” and thanks to its use as a blurb in Internet advertising, that became something of a popular catch-phrase this spring in certain corners of the online community. All this comes as a shock to Knightley as her voice rises with seemingly genuine surprise.

“I’m a tomboy beanpole? I can’t use a computer, so maybe I’m a bit out of the loop. I don’t know whether to be flattered or not flattered. The beanpole bit, is that good?”

As if on cue, her mother reappears, and Knightley apprises her of this new information. “Apparently on the Internet I’m a sexy beanpole, tomboy beanpole.”

Smiling broadly, her mother seems amused as she says slyly, “Oh, I heard about that.”

Slightly flustered perhaps, Knightley peevishly responds, “You didn’t tell me that. Can you be a sexy beanpole?”

Regaining her composure, she concludes, “Thank you, I guess. It could be a lot worse.”