Keira Knightley is a British actress. Knightley began acting as a child on television and made her feature film debut in 1995, before making her breakthrough with the 2002 sports film Bend it like Beckham. She gained wider recognition for playing Elizabeth Swann in the 2003 fantasy swashbuckler film Pirates of the Caribbean, a role she reprised in subsequent films. This much I knew, but recently I discovered that she can also sing and play the guitar. She first sang on screen in the movie The Edge of Love in 2008, the film did not receive much critical success despite her performance being praised.
She found herself being asked to sing again in the movie Begin Again in 2013. Knightley plays a singer-songwriter who is discovered by a struggling record label executive (Mark Ruffalo) and collaborates with him to produce an album recorded in public locations all over New York City. ‘The whole thing was out of my comfort zone,’ she said. ‘I am not a singer. I didn’t know how to do that.’ In preparation for the movie she consulted a vocal coach and was taught to play the guitar by her husband James Righton of the Klaxons.
She relates in an interview for Classic FM, that she was not in her happiest of moods when working with the vocal coach, who made her do lots of scales and told her to sing in the shower. She worked with Adam Levine, the lead singer of Maroon Five. His song Lost Stars was performed by Keira in the film and was nominated for Best Original Song at the 2015 Academy Awards.
James Corden also appeared in the movie. Here he is playing piano with Keira on anothersong from Begin Again. Sadly his kazoo solo does not make it on to the soundtrack.
Finally, although she said that she would probably never sing again, here she is singing in French and playing the guitar as part of ad campaign for Chanel. She sings Le Tourbillon De La Vie, originally made famous by Jeanne Moreau in the classic film ‘Jules et Jim’.
