Keira Knightley Reveals She Suffers From PTSD: ‘I Felt Like I Was Worthless’
Actress Keira Knightley revealed that she was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) following a mental breakdown at the young age of 22, according to BBC News.
The Pirates of the Caribbean star said that she had to take a year off after struggling with her rise to fame and the criticism that came with it.
“I literally felt like I was worthless,” she revealed.
Knightley admitted that despite the success of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise and her performance in Christmas classic Love Actually, she was terrified of the criticism of her acting – to the point that she was too scared to “leave the house and face the paparazzi.”
In an interview for The Hollywood Reporter podcast, the actress said that, looking back, the press run for those movies was “completely insane.”
“It’s amazing looking back at it from the outside – you’re like, ‘Woah, that was hit after hit after hit!’ But, from the inside, all you’re hearing is the criticism, really.”
She said that the fact that she lacked acting training made her focus on the negative aspects of her career, a feeling that continued even after she was nominated for a Best Actress Oscar in 2005 for her role in British drama Pride and Prejudice.
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“I felt pretty much like actually I didn’t exist and I was this weird creature with this weird face that people seemed to respond to in quite an extreme way, and I couldn’t quite figure any of it out,” she admitted.
The actress also stated that leaving her house at the time felt like a constant “battle” because she had up to 20 paparazzi following her every day — baiting her for a reaction.
“If you weren’t breaking down in front of them, then it was worth their while to make you break down. So suddenly there was a level of violence in the air. That is not a thing that anybody would react to well,” the 33-year-old A-lister said.
Knightley also revealed during the interview that, at one point, she didn’t leave her house for a whole three months. She also had to undertake hypnotherapy to prevent a panic attack when she attended the 2008 British Academy Film Awards (BAFTAs), where she was nominated for her performance in Atonement.
When she returned to the Hollyood scene in 2010, following her year off during which she went “deep into therapy,” the star said that she “felt really good” and saw things from a totally different perspective.
Knightley is the latest celebrity to reveal that they had been diagnosed with PTSD. As previously reported by the Inquisitr, pop star Ariana Grande also spoke out about her mental health struggles after her Manchester, England, concert was targeted by terrorists.
