Keira Knightley is ready to flip the script.
The Pirates of the Caribbean star says she’s done doing nudity in movies — well, mostly.
Speaking on the Chanel Connects podcast, the 35-year-old mother of two revealed that shortly after having her first child she put a strict “no nudity clause” in her film contracts. However, there is some leeway there when it comes to working with certain directors:
“I don’t have an absolute ban [on filming nude scenes], but I kind of do with men. It’s partly vanity and also it’s the male gaze.”
Keira has been fairly open with her body, appearing partially nude or engaged in sexual activity in a number of films throughout her career, including The Hole, Domino, Atonement, A Dangerous Method, Colette, The Aftermath — all of which were directed by men.
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But that’s just not what she’s interested in portraying anymore. And while she acknowledges nudity is not inherently a problem in films she just personally would like to stay away from “those horrible s*x scenes where you’re all greased up and everybody is grunting”:
“I’m not interested in doing that.”
Thankfully we’d say Keira has mostly avoided that. Her scenes in Atonement, for instance, were tasteful and artistic and not at all “greased up.”
But even the more prurient scenes aren’t necessarily offensive to the actress, they just aren’t for her:
“Saying that, there’s times where I go, ‘Yeah, I completely see where this s*x would be really good in this film and you basically just need somebody to look hot,’ so therefore you can use somebody else. Because I’m too vain, and the body has had two children now, and I’d just rather not stand in front of a group of men naked.”
It has been noted by many film critics in recent years how differently male and female directors tend to film both intimacy and the female form. And one need not look for obscure films to see examples.
Take the way the Amazons were envisioned by Patty Jenkins for Wonder Woman and later that year by Zach Snyder for Justice League. World of difference.
Here is a fantastic example of the difference between the male and female gaze.
Patty Jenkins' Amazon warriors on the left. Zack Snyder's on the right. pic.twitter.com/fRDkV8dFLe— Melissa Silverstein (@melsil) November 12, 2017
So now that Keira is an established star who can say no to being the onscreen object of the male gaze, she will.
Furthermore, she isn’t much interested in movies about a woman’s journey if they aren’t made by a woman. She explains:
“If I was making a story that was about that journey of motherhood and body [acceptance], I feel like, I’m sorry, but that would have to be with a female filmmaker.”
In that case, nudity as part of that kind of story — told by a woman — that could mean an exception to the ban:
“If it was about motherhood, about how extraordinary that body is, about how suddenly you’re looking at this body that you’ve got to know and is your own and it’s seen in a completely different way and it’s changed in ways which are unfathomable to you before you become a mother, then yeah, I would totally be up for exploring that with a woman who would understand that. But I feel very uncomfortable now trying to portray the male gaze.”
What do YOU think of Keira’s new no-men nudity clause??
[Image via Focus Features/New Line Cinema/YouTube.]
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