Acclaimed actress Keira Knightley is featured on the cover of the latest issue of Violet magazine. In the exclusive interview with the Oscar nominated actress, Knightley discusses her thoughts on feminism and the importance of female representation in cinema…

During the interview, Knightley questions the gender imbalance in Hollywood, asking, “Where are the female stories? Where are they? Where are the directors, where are the writers? It’s imbalanced, so given that we are half the cinema-going public, we are half the people [who] watch drama or watch anything else, where is that? So yes, I think the pay is a huge thing, but I’m actually more concerned over the lack of our voices being heard.” Knightley continues, “I don’t know what happened through the ’80s,’90s, and ’00s that took feminism off the table, that made it something that women weren’t supposed to identify with and were supposed to be ashamed of. Feminism is about the fight for equality between the sexes, with equal respect, equal pay, and equal opportunity. At the moment we are still a long way off that.”

Knightley also explains in the interview why she feels called to play the roles of empowered women, such as the role of mathematician, Joan Clarke, in The Imitation Game. Knightley states, “I think it is interesting that for women in film the problems they face are generally put into the sphere of home and family and not into the workplace. Joan’s real struggles were to get her rightful ‘place at the table,’ and then once she was there, equal pay, which she never came close to.”

Read the rest of the interview in the latest issue of Violet, and watch Keira’s Oscar nominated performance in the trailer for The Imitation Game below!

https://youtu.be/S5CjKEFb-sM