Keira Knightley Recalls Going ‘Mad’ After Paparazzi Followed Her For ‘Five Years’

The Black Doves actress sat down with The Times UK to discuss her rise to stardom, during which she said she faced constant harassment by the paparazzi, leading her to struggle with her mental health.

“I remember waking up one day and there were ten men outside my front door — and they didn’t leave for about five years. Oh, I did go mad,” Knightley says. “Believe me. I went mad. I just managed to hide it.”

When asked for specifics, Knightley claims she was called a “whore” and “slut” whenever she was seen with a man, adding, “They were trying to get a reaction out of them — provoking people into punching them, so they could sue.”

According to the actress, in an attempt to avoid the paparazzi, she began renting a second apartment, but the men quickly caught onto her strategy and rented the apartment opposite her. 

What followed were years of stress and intense hypervigilance. “My dad said, ‘You should be in the CIA,’ because I knew when people were following me. It was a physical feeling,” she expressed. 

The constant intrusion by the paparazzi alarmed her about the consequences of this treatment on her mental health, “‘Were they really following me, or was I imagining it?’ So then you’d buy all the papers — and every single time I was right. There would be a photo,” she said. “Even if I hadn’t actually seen them. Because you’re in a hypervigilant state. A heightened state.”

And after several years of being followed, she realized she had to come up with a tactic once and for all. Knightley describes garnering inspiration from , passive resistance. 

“I started wearing the same clothes every day. And then, if I was being followed, I stopped walking. Stock still. One day, I stood there for five hours,” recalls the Love Actually actress. “Because it wasn’t a valuable shot to them if it was always me in the same clothes, standing still.”

But after that still wasn’t enough, she decided she needed a complete break and asked her agent not to send her any more scripts. She traveled all over Europe, and spent time learning to enjoy a new sort of anonymity. 

Yet, she wondered how she could come back to her profession in a smaller way — slowly initiating work in theater projects. 

After years of alleged harrassment, her main takeaway was her strength, “I didn’t want to be beaten. I wasn’t going to let them win. I was very, very, very driven. Don’t get me wrong — I was cracking up, but I wasn’t going to let them beat me. No, no, no. No,” she concluded.