Keira Knightley Talks 'Pirates Of The Caribbean'

Can you tell us a bit about your character?

I’m the damsel in distress. You always need one and I’m always there pirating away and screaming in the corner. I play Elizabeth Swann who is a 21st Century girl stuck in an 18th Century world. She wants more to life than polite conversations and sipping cups of tea. She wants adventure and unfortunately it finds her and it’s not as great as it’s cracked up to be. She’s a strong character and a bit of a rebel who gets into all sorts of trouble with a lot of pirates and gets stranded on a dessert island with Johnny.

Do you have any fight scenes?

I do have fight scenes. She starts kicking ass which is great because she spends quite a bit of time hovering in the corner going “Oh My God!” which is quite understandable if you get taken away by pirates. She really starts to fight back so I had fight scenes with staffs and candlesticks, never a sword. They wouldn’t give me a sword. Originally there weren’t any fight scenes in the script. I don’t remember first reading it thinking oh my God; I am going to be an action figure. Suddenly, I’m doing all these fight scenes. I said, WAIT! WAIT! This wasn’t what I signed up for! (Jokingly, of course) I signed up for a nice corseted job sitting in the corner, occasionally coming in to do a close-up. That’s what I signed up for and suddenly I’m fighting all these baddies.

You guys use a lot of CGI in this film too right?

There’s a lot of CGI and these skeletal pirates and stuff so you don’t actually fight with anybody. It’s not like two actors doing a fight scene. You do the fight with an actor and then the actor disappears and you do the fight without anybody there so you’re being beat up by an invisible person. I was fighting with a big staff and then had to do it without the staff because of the CGI. So, not only did they take the actor away, they took my weapon away as well. I’m miming the whole thing. I never thought that mime would be something I’d need to use but it’s safe to say that if you’re at drama school and you get the chance, for God’s sake, just make sure you watch the mime classes.