Keira Knightley has revealed that she nearly gave up acting after she suffered a post-traumatic stress disorder breakdown.
The actress shot to fame at age seventeen, when she starred in the hit film, Bend It Like Beckham.
Keira’s career went from strength to strength from then on, but the star suffered a breakdown when she was just 23-years-old, as she told The Sunday Times’ Style Magazine it happened following a “very intense and lonely” time.
Speaking of the pressure in her career, the actress admitted that she thought about turning away from acting: “I did think about it, particularly at the point when I had a breakdown.”
“I had PTSD and panic attacks. I literally couldn’t work for a year and I didn’t know whether there would be an end to that.”
The mother-of-one found strength within her family and friends though: “I have a super-solid background and thank f**k for that.
“My family and my small, but very close, group of friends just wrapped me up. And, I think, without that, it would have been a very different story.”
“I knew I always had somebody there to cuddle me who didn’t want anything from me. Ultimately I didn’t want them (the media and paparazzi) to win. The only thing I want to do is make films.”
Keira previously opened up about her PTSD in an interview with the Hollywood Reporter in which she said: “I felt pretty much like actually I didn’t exist and I was this weird creature with this weird face that people seemed to respond to in quite an extreme way.”
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