Knightley's tale

Only the extraordinarily gifted or outlandishly lucky make the cover of

'Our new English Rose,' drooled the New York Postwhen she turned up next in a Love Actually cameo, her third hit in a row. But in the flesh Knightley resembles less a delicate flower and more a furry animal. A big puppy, to be precise. It's the brown eyes, the tossing of the fringe, the playful manner. That, and the way she's dressed down in jeans and T-shirt and is still giggly and unguarded. Knightley will tell you about her crush on George Clooney - 'I go weak at the knees' - and how she loathes exercising - 'I hate the gym!' - and even what living with dyslexia is like: 'I was diagnosed when I was six. I worked hard to get the better of it and, by the time I got to secondary school, I was dealing with it. I can read and write - badly - but I'm fine reading scripts. And I left school with starred 'A's in my GCSEs.'

She skips the fact that she left school to star as Lara in the TV version of Dr Zhivago. She insists everything is sheer good fortune. Working with rising director Gurinda Chadha, powerhouse producer Jerry Bruckheimer, top comedy writer Richard Curtis - all luck, no strategy.

Nor does she have a manager, PA or even a personal publicist.

Indeed, the only time Knightley clams up is when I ask about her boyfriend Jamie Dornan. She may be regularly photographed wrapped around the Irish model, but she's quick to deflect questions about whether they are living together. 'I don't know what you're talking about,' she says mock-scandalised. 'Besides, aren't we here to talk about King Arthur?'

Arthur, the $80 million epic, is Knightley's second would-be summer blockbuster with Bruckheimer, except instead of Johnny Depp and Orlando Bloom co-starring with her in a Disney theme-ride romp, this time she has Clive Owen - 'He's s-o-o-o sexy!' --and Ioan Gruffudd playing Arthur and Lancelot to her Guinevere. As befits this dark reinterpretation of the Round Table, Knightley's Queen Of The Picts is no helpless maiden, but a warrior queen equipped with axe, knife and bow and arrow.

That's down in no small part to the complaints Knightley made to Bruckheimer about how the men got to do all the swashbuckling in Pirates. 'It really excited me, the idea of playing a Guinevere who's not the romantically innocent being we all know, and changing her into this political figure. If she was around today, she'd be a master politician,' says Knightley, who had to endure three months of commando training to get in shape for the part. 'That and a lot of weightlifting,' she grins. 'I went up over a dress size because

I gained so much muscle. And I loved it. If I didn't have to work so hard at maintaining it I'd have loved to have kept that body. But two hours a day, four or five days a week - it isn't going to happen.' the armourclad Owen, Gruffudd et al had a miserable time shooting during an unseasonably hot Irish summer last year, Knightley had a much cooler time in an outfit she rather generously calls a 'nearly bikini top'. But while the outfit exploited her physique, it wasn't, she adds hastily, gratuitous. 'Historically, the Picts would have fought almost nude so I was lucky I was covered at all.' The fact that the movie posters have gifted her with a bust a Page 3 girl might envy also strikes her as hysterically funny. 'You have to take that stuff in your stride,' she laughs.

One reason Knightley is so good at taking things in her stride is her family background. Her mother is playwright Sharman Macdonald and her father the actor Will Knightley, and Keira grew up intimately acquainted with the highs and lows of showbiz. If Macdonald's award-winning When I Was A Girl I Used To Scream And Shout hadn't made money, she and her husband were seriously considering keeping their family to one son. Instead, the box office sanctioned their daughter's birth.

'I was six when I decided to be an actress,' says Knightley. 'I've never wanted to do anything else, which is pretty sad really. I spent most of my time round people in that industry and things just rub off when you're around really creative people from a young age. I just wanted to be part of that world. I asked for an agent when I was three, I've been told, precocious little brat that I was.'

Her parents coached her to be grateful if she ever got work, and she is. So much work, in fact, that since her first movie appearance, as Natalie Portman's decoy in Star Wars: Episode 1, 'I haven't had a chance to step back and really look at my career. Because I literally haven't stopped working. But if I do eventually, I might get rather freaked out by it.' She hasn't even had the opportunity to enjoy her first home away from her parents, an expensive flat near Hyde Park. 'I haven't been there. So far, I only have a bed and a wardrobe,' she shrugs.

Her next two roles, as Elizabeth Bennet in a new production of Pride And Prejudice with Judi Dench and Matthew MacFadyen and in director John Maybury's The Jacket, in which she plays an alcoholic waitress opposite Adrien Brody, are likely to prove more of a test of her acting abilities than any of her parts to date. Maybury didn't want her, and told her so, but Knightley was determined. 'That was an awful audition, because I had food poisoning and the whole time I was with John I was thinking, "Don't puke over him." But I convinced him, I finally convinced him.'