Keira Knightley: I didn’t feel I could ask about pay gap but I do now

Keira Knightley has said she has learned to ask about any gender pay gap on her films and knows she has not made less than her male co-stars on her last two movies.

The British actress, 33, said she did not used to ask how her salary compared to the pay packet of the men she was working with.

“It didn’t even occur to me,” she told Elle magazine.

“It felt like something you couldn’t question.

“But I do ask now, and I can safely say that in my last two films, I have not made less than the men I’ve been working with.”

Knightley also talked about the difficulties of navigating fame as a woman.

“The double standards that women face are so extreme, particularly at that age,” she said.

“Men are meant to be getting drunk and falling out of clubs.

“Then (people) go, ‘Yeah, you’re cool!’ But if I’d been seen as a party girl, it could’ve been the end of my career.

“We also live in a society that gives unbelievably difficult messages to young women.

“You’re meant to be thin, but not that thin. You’re supposed to go out and have sex, then people say, ‘No, you’re a slut.’

“You’re always too much of something.”