Above: Keira Knightley in her Academy Award-nominated role in Atonement. |
Although she’s received more press in fashion magazines this year than any other, and a recent Forbes list puts her as Hollywood’s second-highest-paid actress, Keira Knightley admits to Tatler, in the next issue on sale Thursday, that she feels inadequate next to better educated actors because she never went to university.
‘Not going to university did give me an incredible driving force because it leaves you with a slight chip on your shoulder. It makes me feel I am going to read absolutely everything so I can prove that I am not stupid,’ she tells the magazine.
In a preview of the article in The Daily Telegraph, Knightley lists ‘a biography of Albert Speer, a history of the Vietnam War, the treatises of Mary Wollstonecraft and Germaine Greer’s feminist text The Female Eunuch’ on her current reading list.
Knightley was beaten to the top spot in the Forbes list by Cameron Diaz, who earned $50 million last year versus her $32 million. With their male counterparts, the gender gap remained apparent: Will Smith was number one with $80 million, followed by Johnny Depp with $72 million.