Keira Knightley might not be anorexic, but the public once thought that she was. In fact, the outcry against her seemingly too-slim body in 2007 became so overwhelming that it actually made the 27-year-old actress question whether or not she actually was healthy.
"The anorexic stuff -- all of that -- it's always going to have an impact, so I think it did hit pretty hard. Because you go, 'Oh, maybe that's right!'" Knightley admits in the December issue of Allure. "I knew I wasn't anorexic, but maybe my body is somehow not right. Or my face is not right. Or the way I speak is not right.' When you're going through a period where you're really getting a lot of criticism, you go, 'Maybe all this is right! You just kind of want to hide it all.'"
Fortunately Knightley seems to have come to terms with her body in the years since the anorexia scandal. The Anna Karenina star poses topless for the cover of Allure and admits that she isn't especially self-conscious about the body parts she choses to show on film.
"I'm quite rigorous about what gets exposed," she says. "No bottom half! I don't mind exposing my t-ts because they're so small -- people really aren't that interested."
She adds, "I think it's much easier as you get older. You can say, 'No.' 'Yes.' 'No.'"
A large part of her more centered sense of self came after a month-long trip through Europe. She admits that she needed that time to herself to refocus on what she wanted to do.
"I'd hit a wall and needed to step back in order to learn the things I needed to learn," Knightley says. "There's clearly something in me that goes, 'No, actually, I know I've got something.'"
