Keira Knightley dealt with childhood dyslexia by reading Emma Thompson's Oscar-winning screenplay for Sense and Sensibility, she has revealed. The 26-year-old actor, currently promoting the David Cronenberg film A Dangerous Method, which is out in UK cinemas on 10 February, told GQ magazine she learned to bypass her dyslexia by focusing on the script and imagining what Thompson would do in her shoes.
"My mum, who worked with her on Sense and Sensibility got me a copy of the screenplay Emma had written," said Knightley. "And I was – am – dyslexic and the way she got me over it was to say: 'If Emma Thompson couldn't read, she'd make ------- sure she'd get over it, so you have to start reading, because that's what Emma Thompson would do'."
Knightley, who was allowed an agent at the age of six as a reward for dealing with her dyslexia and performing well at school, later went on to star as Elizabeth Bennet in another Jane Austen film adaptation, 2005's Pride and Prejudice. In A Dangerous Method she plays Sabina Spielrein, a one-time patient of Carl Jung who becomes a pioneering psychoanalyst herself. During the GQ interview she also revealed that she is occasionally reduced to tears by negative reviews of her work.