Keira Knightley Proud Of Her Period Drama Films

Keira Knightley has done several period dramas, especially in her younger years, and even though she was criticized for it, she says she is very proud of her choices.

The 28-year-old British actress who is currently starring in the new Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit movie opposite Chris Pine in the title role, admits she felt as if she did something “wrong” when people would criticize her decision to do period films.

Keira Knightley says she doesn’t feel the need to apologize for those choices anymore. Speaking to Radar magazine, she had this to say:

“When I was younger I felt I really was doing something wrong for doing period dramas. I think I’ve now got to where I can’t stop apologizing for that bit and go, ‘I love them, I’ve always loved them, I love doing them.'”

“I think it’s something to do with me and the way my imagination and fantasy world works – I love that you can just dive into it. Your own world, your own life, your own personality is completely lost because everywhere that you know is taken away and you get to dive into a total fantasy. And I love that.”

Keira Knightley has been taking a break from big films since her last starring role — in another period drama called Anna Karenina, for which she reunited with director Joe Wright and co-star Matthew Macfadyen from Pride And Prejudice.

Shadow Recruit is a departure from the kinds of films we are used to seeing from the British actress — it’s an action film:

“(I wanted to) do different things, really. I’ve been doing, over the last five years, an awful lot of very dark pieces of work. I wanted to get to do something that was lighter. Jack Ryan is popcorn, a pure piece of entertainment. I thought, ‘I haven’t done a pure piece of entertainment for at least six, seven years.'”

Since Pirates Of The Caribbean, the mega blockbuster Johnny Depp franchise, Keira Knightley has done more low key, indie films, but now she is ready for the big time again.

The actress admits that doing such blockbuster films comes with a lot of “baggage”:

“Having to do a lot of interviews like this all around the world (…) you’re signing up for a lot of that.”

She has also learned how to deal with media attention and the especially that of the paparazzi:

“It did make certain things very difficult.” Keira Knightley admits of fame. “When you’ve got 20 guys outside your house and they’re shouting ‘whore’ at you every single day, you don’t want to leave the house.”

For Keira Knightley, her role in Jack Ryan Shadow Recruit is a something completely different from the much darker pieces she did in the past few years.

Jack Ryan is, of course, the Tom Clancy character that has been portrayed by the likes of Alec Baldwin, Harrison Ford, and Ben Affleck. In the film, Keira Knightley plays a young Cathy Ryan, the wife of our hero, who goes looking for her husband and finds out he is not who she thought he was.