Keira Knightley has made it clear that she can do pretty much anything onscreen. Now, the 39-year-old is crushing it in a new Netflix action series where she’s pretty much always on the go.
It’s called Black Doves, and it stars Keira as mom-of-two who secretly works as a spy. When her lover is killed, Keira’s Helen Webb is determined to figure out why. Naturally, there’s a lot of butt-kicking, running, and martial arts in the mix.
Black Doves is so gripping that it’s already been renewed for a second season. But while you’re obsessing over each episode, it’s hard to miss the fact that Keira looks incredibly strong right now. Here’s what she did to train for the series, plus her overall approach to fitness.
She trained extensively for ‘Black Doves.’
Keira’s role involves a lot of combat, so she basically went to spy boot camp to get up to speed. That meant spending a month training in jiu-jitsu, boxing, and knife fighting.
“We were really lucky,” she told Extra. “We worked with an amazing stunt team and so the pieces, obviously, were very choreographed… we did a lot of training to get our bodies to understand how exactly they would do that.”
But it “great fun” for Keira to learn all of the fighting. “I’ve really enjoyed learning all of the different martial arts that I have been taught,” she told Netflix’s Tudum.
She isn’t a fan of the gym, but previously worked with a personal trainer.
While she looks comfortable in an action-packed series, Keira has previously said that the gym just isn’t her thing. “I just hate going to the gym,” she told the Daily Express in 2014. “The most exercise I get is turning on the TV.”
Still, Keira has reportedly worked with trainer Pierre Pozzuto, so she’s apparently ramped up her fitness game since then.
She doesn’t restrict herself when it comes to eating.
Keira says she’s a “glutton” when it comes to food, writing in an essay for Noble Rot that she’s a that she’s spent a “large part of my time and money stuffing myself in the most disgusting, luxurious and outrageous ways.” Keira added that she’s worked with caviar and truffle dealers to get top-tier culinary ingredients.
The Pirates of the Caribbean alum has also made it clear that she’s not into diets. “The very thought of a diet makes me want chips and ice cream,” she told the Daily Express.
She isn’t a fan of body shaming.
Unfortunately, Keira has dealt with rumors that she suffers from anorexia, an eating disorder characterized by limiting the amount or type of food you eat, for years. But all of the speculation around her weight has been pretty traumatic for the star—in fact, she’s mentally blocked out most of it.
“In that classic trauma way, I don’t remember it,” she recently told The Times. “There’s been a complete delete, and then some things will come up and I’ll suddenly have a very bodily memory of it because, ultimately, it’s public shaming, isn’t it?”
When she was 22, Keira had a “mental breakdown” from all of the stress surrounding her job. “I went deep into therapy and all of that, and [my therapist] said, ‘It’s amazing — I normally come in here and have people that think people are talking about them and they think that they’re being followed, but actually they’re not,” she told The Hollywood Reporter in 2018. “‘You’re the first person that actually that is happening to!’”
After that, Keira ended up taking a year off. She felt “really good” getting back to work, adding that she “suddenly didn’t care” about what other people thought of her.
Congrats on the new series, Keira!
Korin Miller is a freelance writer specializing in general wellness, sexual health and relationships, and lifestyle trends, with work appearing in Men’s Health, Women’s Health, Self, Glamour, and more. She has a master’s degree from American University, lives by the beach, and hopes to own a teacup pig and taco truck one day.