Keira Knightley plays Helen Webb, a senior politician’s wife and murderous spy (Image: AP)
Dressed in a stylish brown-belted leather jacket, she stabs one of her two female attackers in the thigh before striking the other one’s gun out of her hand. She ducks and dives, delivering more punches and kicks, knocking one assailant to the floor in a millisecond. Then as she is charged by her still-standing opponent, her old friend and hitman Sam arrives to save the day with a shotgun blast that leaves her smeared in blood like a scene from Carrie.
Welcome to Black Doves – and Keira Knightley as you’ve never seen her before. Once the queen of period dramas, such as Pride and Prejudice and Atonement, and an object of desire in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, the English actress is back to kick ass in this black comedic six-part thriller as a politician’s wife who is secretly a murderous spy.
And it’s fair to say the show is creating a buzz around Knightley not seen in years. Since its release on December 5, Black Doves has become a commercial and critical success. It was ’s number one show in its first week, while fans have raved about the performances of Knightley and Ben Whishaw as her assassin sidekick Sam.
has already commissioned a second season. But if this fast-paced racy romp through London’s streets, set aptly at Christmas time, has proven anything it’s that there is life after corsets and bonnets for Knightley who proves a credible lead and knife fighter.
In fact, her strong performance has earned the 39-year-old actress a Golden Globe nomination for Best Female Actor in a television drama series, her first major award nomination in a decade. And critics are just as excited. Film review website Roger Egbert said the role of Webb offered Knightley a “role of a lifetime, one that forces her to balance her comedic chops with her physicality”.
Ben Whishaw and Keira Knightley team up in new Netflix hit Black Doves (Image: Netflix)
Praising her performance, Empire said: “Knightley squeezes everything out of her best role in years, ably gliding through comedy, action and domestic drama. While she’s always been a significantly talented dramatic actress, it’s in Black Doves that she gets the space to offer audiences a performance from her that they’ve never seen.”
What has got critics, and audiences so excited, is Knightley’s convincing multi-layered performance as a mercenary, murderer, risk-taker, devoted mother and wronged lover.
Her character Helen Webb works for a shadowy organisation, the aforementioned Black Doves, who retrieve secrets for the highest bidder… no matter who they are.
Helen is married to Tory Defence Secretary Wallace Webb, played by Andrew Buchan, but is secretly having an affair with Jason (Andrew Koji) when he is shot dead in an assassination. Meanwhile, the Chinese ambassador to the UK has been murdered and his partygoing daughter kidnapped, sparking an international diplomatic fallout between governments, one expertly manipulated by murderous gangs.
As this plays out, Helen seeks revenge for her lover while coming under the increasingly careful watch of her icy-cool and elusive boss Reed, played by Sarah Lancashire.
Knightley relished the chance for a role with bite. “I was looking for something that involved curious creatures doing strange things, and Helen’s definitely a curious creature and she’s definitely doing strange things,” she said in a recent interview. “She’s a mercenary and a character with lots of contradictions. I enjoyed all of them.”
And it really feels like a return to major stardom for Knightley who, despite being one of our most successful actresses, has largely avoided the limelight in recent years.
The 2005 film adaptation of Pride & Prejudice starring Keira Knightley and Matthew Macfadyen (Image: Focus Features)
In 2018, she revealed she had suffered a mental breakdown aged 22 as she struggled to deal with the pressures of her worldwide fame following the success of Love Actually and the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise from 2003 to 2007.
Diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, she took a year off work and admitted to feeling too scared to leave the house because of the intrusion from paparazzi. Knightley found sanctuary with therapy and the love of her family but admitted that criticism of her acting had made her feel “worthless”. Speaking at the time, she said: “It’s amazing looking back at it from the outside – you’re like, ‘Woah, that was hit after hit after hit!’ But, from the inside, all you’re hearing is the criticism, really.”
Having had her first agent aged six, Knightley rose to prominence at 17 as a tomboy footballer in the 2002 coming-of-age comedy Bend It Like Beckham.
It was a year later when she starred in Richard Curtis’s syrupy but much-loved Christmas romcom Love Actually, now synonymous with Andrew Lincoln’s character expressing his love for her in a series of cue cards on her doorstep.
Then came Pirates of the Caribbean and 2005’s critically-mauled Domino, in which she played a fashion model turned bounty hunter with an elfin crop.
Keira Knightley as Elizabeth Swan in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise with Johnny Depp (Image: Disney)
But it was also during this period that Knightley embarked on a series of period films beginning with Jane Austen’s heroine Elizabeth in a 2005 remake of Pride and Prejudice. She became the poster girl for historical dramas starring in Atonement (2007), The Duchess (2008), A Dangerous Method (2011), Anna Karenina (2012), and The Imitation Game (2014).
In 2013, she married Klaxons singer James Righton with whom she had two daughters, born in 2015 and 2019, and since then has concentrated on making independent films. Last year, she ruled out a return to the Pirates of Caribbean franchise in the event of a future reboot.
Speaking to The Times last month, it’s clear she’s still conflicted about that crazy level of fame and fandom.
“It’s a funny thing when you have something that was making and breaking you at the same time,” she said of the Pirates trilogy, also starring Johnny Depp and Orlando Bloom. “I was seen as sh*t because of them, and yet because they did so well I was given the opportunity to do the films that I ended up getting Oscar nominations for.
“They were the most successful films I’ll ever be a part of and they were the reason that I was taken down publicly. So they’re a very confused place in my head.”
If Black Doves is reinventing Knightley as both an action heroine and serious actress rolled into one, we can give thanks to its strong characterisation and witty script. Imagine Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels director Guy Ritchie getting his hands on spy thriller Slow Horses and you get the idea.
The series is the brainchild of British screenwriter Joe Barton who wrote the scripts for two critically-acclaimed series, 2019’s crime series Giri/Haji and the 2022 sci-fi drama The Lazarus Project. Barton is convinced Knightley brings the depth required to anchor the complexities of her character.
“People know the period drama, Jane Austen side. But she’s done Pirates of the Caribbean and Domino, she’s done silly and also very serious. She’s a really fantastic, underrated actor,” he said.
Citing her role playing an unlikeable privileged young woman in Atonement, he said Knightley “does ‘below the surface, striving to escape from something’ really well”.
Keira Knightley is famed for her period roles such as 2012’s Anna Karenina (Image: Universal Pictures)
Knightley won an Oscar nomination for that role. She has in fact been nominated for two Academy Awards, two BAFTAs, four Golden Globes and one Laurence Olivier but a win has yet to materialise.
When recently asked about her incredible career to date – reflecting on the good, bad and ugly of it all – Knightley acknowledged the early bumps had afforded her career freedom and security.
“It’s very brutal to have your privacy taken away in your teenage years, early 20s, and to be put under that scrutiny at a point when you are still growing,” she said.
“Having said that, I wouldn’t have the financial stability or the career that I do now without that period. I had a five-year-period between the age of 17 and 21-ish, and I’m never going to have that kind of success again. It totally set me up for life. Did it come at a cost? Yes, it did. It came at a big cost. Knowing the cost, could I, in all good conscience, say to my kid, you should do that? No. But am I grateful for it? Yes. But then that’s life, isn’t it?”
Now, with Black Doves, it seems she’s finally cracked the formula of how to make it as an A-lister. Don’t be too surprised if she finally wins that Golden Globe.
Black Doves is out now on