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ALTHOUGH KEIRA KNIGHTLEY’S acting career began in the early 1990s, it wasn’t until she had a major role in the movie Bend It Like Beckham that she became a household name. 

For the next few years following Bend It Like Beckham, Knightley had a number of significant roles in movies like Love Actually, Pride & Prejudice, Atonement and the Pirates of the Caribbean series. It seemed as though her career was going from strength to strength, but in a recent interview Knightley revealed that behind the scenes she was suffering immensely. 

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In The Hollywood Reporter’s Awards Chatter podcast, the 33-year-old actress admitted that she was diagnosed with PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) after she had a mental breakdown at the age of 22. 

It’s amazing, looking back at it from the outside, you’re like “Woah, that was hit after hit! But, from the inside, all you’re hearing is the criticism, really.

I literally felt like I was worthless.

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, and I couldn’t quite figure any of it out.

Knightley detailed how she developed serious anxiety when it came to leaving the house, and stayed at home for three months to avoid being followed by paparazzi, who often tried to get a rise out her.

If you weren’t breaking down in front of them, then it was worth their while to make you break down in front of them. So, suddenly there was a level of violence, it felt, in the air. This is not a thing that anybody would react to well. 

The actress also revealed that she had to turn to hypnotherapy to deal with panic attacks, in order to attend award shows. Eventually, she took a year off and went “deep into therapy”, which helped her to become more confident in herself when she returned to work in 2010. 

Keira Knightley was just one of many female celebrities victimised by the media in the mid 2000s, and seems to still be dealing with the consequences of it. Lily Allen, who was also a prominent figure of that era, could barely go to the shops without being plastered on tabloids and torn to shreds.

After more than ten years in the public eye, Lily Allen eventually realised that the only way to cope with the excessive exposure and criticism she had faced (and still does) was to try and own it, which is why she shared her side of many of her biggest controversies on her most recent album her album ‘No Shame’ and her new autobiography ‘My Thoughts Exactly’. 

The world watched on, and many laughed, when Britney Spears suffered a public breakdown in 2007. Looking back on these events, it seems as though very few people were stepping up and saying “Hold on, this really isn’t okay”.

By the time 2012 rolled around and we all witnessed Amanda Bynes’ going through something very similar to Britney’s breakdown in real-time on Twitter, there were plenty of people laughing, but for once, it seemed as though as many others were concerned.

Maybe everyone learned a lesson after the death of Amy Winehouse a year prior. Maybe it was because public discourse about mental health has changed so much over the last decade. Or maybe, people just use the internet differently now – to comment rather than consume. Who knows.

We’d like to think that we’ve advanced beyond all of that now, but the intrusiveness of paparazzi into the lives of vulnerable celebrities like Ariana Grande and Demi Lovato proves that there’s still a long, long way to go.

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