Lockdown drove Keira Knightley a bit mad, says Lydia Slater in Harper’s Bazaar. At first the 36-year-old actress boosted family morale by dressing up every day. Her daughters, Edie and Delilah, wore ribbons and fairy wings. Her husband, former Klaxons frontman James Righton, dressed in peacock-coloured Gucci suits. And I pulled out “every bit of Chanel that I have in my cupboard”, says Knightley. Then they all bounced on their trampoline.
The madness didn’t stop there. Righton – “quite extreme, vaguely OCD” – began sanitising their fruit in boiling water. “That was a really weird time, us dressed in really bright clothes, boiling apples.” Halfway through the second lockdown, he insisted that they only buy vegetables from “regenerative farms”. All I wanted was a takeaway, but he insisted on eating root vegetables for supper. At one point she threw a large celeriac on the floor in protest. “It made quite a thunk.”
These days she’s stomping around London, listening to an audiobook about Boudicca and becoming more vocal about the problems women face. Everyone I know has experienced harassment, she says. “Whether it’s being flashed at, or groped, or some guy saying they’re going to slit your throat, or punching you in the face, or whatever it is, everybody has.” It’s infuriating. That’s why she’s enjoying the story of Boudicca: “Something very pagan and powerfully female feels nice to listen to right now.”