Keira Knightley at Twenty-Four

There’s a particular kind of intelligence in how she holds her face. It’s not a beauty-pageant thing—it’s closer to attentiveness, like she’s tracking three conversations at once and finding them all faintly absurd. She doesn’t do the thing most actors do where they’re constantly performing for you. She seems to be thinking about something else entirely.

I got into her work through the pirate films, obviously, but what stuck was Atonement—that scene where she’s typing the letter, the light coming through the window of her room. There’s something about the way she moves through that film that feels real in a way most period dramas aren’t. She doesn’t soften herself or make herself smaller. She’s just there, sharp and present.

People have always had weird opinions about her body, which says more about them than it does about her. She just doesn’t care what shape she’s supposed to be in. There’s something genuinely punk about that, even if she’d never describe it that way.

She’ll keep getting better at this. The roles keep getting smarter—she’s not interested in being just a pretty thing on screen, and studios that understand that are lucky to have her. Twenty-four is young for an actor finding her actual range.