Keira Knightley Says She’s Done With Male-Directed Sex Scenes

Keira Knightley plans to set new boundaries on baring it all on film. 

Appearing on the “Chanel Connects” podcast earlier this month, the “Love Actually” and “Pirates of the Caribbean” actor opened up about the challenges of shooting love scenes. And though she isn’t opposed to stripping down for the sake of a good story, she said she’s going to be more selective about the filmmakers behind such projects. 

“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,” Knightley said in a discussion with director Lulu Wang and writer-producer Diane Solway. “I don’t have an absolute ban, but I kind of do with men.”

“I don’t want it to be those horrible sex scenes where you’re all greased up and everybody is grunting,” she continued, noting that she was raised by a “feminist” mother. “I’m not interested in doing that.”

In 2014, Knightley posed topless for an Interview magazine spread to show what she looks like without photo editing. And though she shared a memorable sex scene with actor James McAvoy in 2007’s “Atonement,” she reportedly opted for a body double for 2019’s “The Aftermath.” 

Elsewhere in her “Chanel Connects” interview, Knightley said she feels “very uncomfortable now trying to portray the male gaze,” noting that her feelings regarding onscreen nudity have shifted since becoming a mother to daughters Edie, 5, and Delilah, 1. 

“I’m too vain, and [my] body has had two children now,” she said, “and I’d just rather not stand in front of a group of men naked.”

The two-time Oscar nominee previously opened up about the dismissive behavior she says she experienced from male colleagues in a 2018 essay, “The Weaker Sex.” 

“I work with men and they worry that I don’t like them,” she wrote at the time. “It makes them mad, it makes them sad, it makes them shout and scream. I like them. But I don’t want to flirt and mother them. … I don’t want to flirt with you because I don’t want to fuck you, and I don’t want to mother you because I am not your mother.”

Knightley will next be seen in Camille Griffin’s comedy “Silent Night,” which also stars Matthew Goode and Lily-Rose Depp.