Keira Knightley Opens Up About Feminism in the New Issue of “Violet”

(photo: Elena Rendina for Violet)

The beautiful cover imagery of Keira Knightley in repose might be the thing that entices you to pick up the latest issue of Violet, but the interview inside with the actress is what truly makes it a must-have. In conversation with Amanda de Cadenet, Knightley opens up about what it means to be a woman in the film industry, providing thoughtful insight into the problems many actresses—and women on the whole—face in today’s world.

“Where are the female stories? Where are they? Where are the directors, where are the writers? It’s imbalanced, so given that we are half the cinema-going public, we are half the people [who] watch drama or watch anything else, where is that? So yes, I think the pay is a huge thing, but I’m actually more concerned over the lack of our voices being heard,” Knightley states in the mag. “I don’t know what happened through the ’80s,’90s, and ’00s that took feminism off the table, that made it something that women weren’t supposed to identify with and were supposed to be ashamed of. Feminism is about the fight for equality between the sexes, with equal respect, equal pay, and equal opportunity. At the moment we are still a long way off that.”

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(photos: Elena Rendina for Violet)

Knightley also elaborates on her decisions to play empowered women, and says of her role as mathematician Joan Clarke in The Imitation Game: “I think it is interesting that for women in film the problems they face are generally put into the sphere of home and family and not into the workplace. Joan’s real struggles were to get her rightful ‘place at the table,’ and then once she was there, equal pay, which she never came close to.”

Elsewhere in the magazine, female-positive stories are plentiful. Director-screenwriter Nicole Holofcener and Sarah Sophie Flicker discuss female friendships, while photographer Karolin Klüppel traveled to Mawlynnong, India, a village that operates under the principles of a matrilineal society, to photograph young women. Dreamy editorials abound in the back of the book, including those styled by Violet founder Leith Clark and Valentine Fillol-Cordier.

(photo: Elena Rendina for Violet)

See all the photos of Keira Knightley’s editorial—shot by Elena Rendina and styled by Leith Clark—here, and pick up the new issue of Violet this week. 

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