Keira Knightley was just 17 years old when she shot the very first Pirates of the Caribbean movie. Although the film was a huge success, the young actress struggled with the scathing reviews that targeted her performance as Elizabeth Swann. While speaking with Rosamund Pike for a Vanity Fair feature about the 20th anniversary of Pride & Prejudice, Knightley even said that Pirates of the Caribbean made audiences view her as a “terrible actress.“
This made things all the more confusing when he received an Oscar nomination for her work on Pride & Prejudice.
“Pirates of the Caribbean had already come out, but I think in the public consciousness, I was seen as a terrible actress,” she said. “But I had this phenomenally big success with Pirates. And I think [Pride & Prejudice] was the first one that was a phenomenally big success, but was also critically acclaimed. So I remember it coming out maybe the same year, maybe around the same time as Pirates 2. And I got the worst reviews ever for that, and then also being nominated for an Oscar at the same time—it was, in my 21-year-old head, quite confusing.“
Knightley appeared in the first three installments of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, and later made a cameo in Dead Men Tell No Tales. Regarding any future appearances, it doesn’t sound likely as Knighley still has a lot of mixed feelings about her time on the series. “They were the most successful films I’ll ever be a part of and they were the reason that I was taken down publicly,” she said last year. “So they’re a very confused place in my head. The hours are insane. It’s years of your life, you have no control over where you’re filming, how long you’re filming, what you’re filming.“
A sixth installment of the franchise has been in the works for a while, but it’s still unclear if it will be a proper sequel, a reboot, or something in between. When it comes to Johnny Depp’s involvement as Captain Jack Sparrow, a report last year stated that “Nothing has been ruled out.” It’s also been said that franchise producer Jerry Bruckheimer is developing two versions of the script: one that includes Depp and another that does not.
