The Fake Life - Love movies? We do too!

Monday, July 17, 2006

Geek Pin-Up #6: Keira Knightley

Ms. Knightley is currently steaming up screens in the impossibly successful Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, but she's been around for a few years, and in that short space of time, she's gathered a huge band of followers that would make Thulsa Doom run for cover after shooting snake arrows at them.

Keira began her career in the mid-nineties on UK television, with popular cop show The Bill one of her stops, before she ended up in the role that first alerted me to her ability to make men quiver in their Boba Fett undies, as Queen Amidala's decoy in The Phantom Menace. I actually remember stating to several people how hot I thought she was, only to have the opinion shoved back in my face, so I feel a certain degree of satisfaction now that she's a regular feature in male spank banks worldwide.

But the role that broke her into the mainstream was as a spunky female footballer (not the wussy padded stuff that takes four hours to play a forty-five minute game so Budweiser can sell beer and Ford can sell SUVs) in Bend It Like Beckham, referring to walking Brycreem advert David Beckham. After starring in a very good adaptation of Dr. Zhivago, she then took the role of posh crumpet-turned-pirate fancier Elizabeth Swann, and the rest is history.

Since then, she's shown how really good she is at acting in Pride and Prejudice, and then went back into the action genre with Tony Scott's much-maligned Domino, in the sexiest performance in a long long time. Even people who hate the film have to admit how good she is in it.

And that takes us up to POTC 2. But what does the future hold? Will she continue to make pirate sequels and take respectable action jobs? Will she rebel against the mainstream and go for that six-figure centerfold spread in Playboy, or Razzle? Who knows, but as long as she keeps looking like she does, she'll be shivering my timbers for years to come.

Posted by Charlie @ 5:34 PM