Let me just go on record as saying I think Keira Knightly is brilliant. She’s gorgeous and intelligent-looking, which is more than you can say for quite a few A-list celebs.
Who could have failed to be charmed by her sassy performance in Bend it Like Beckham?
And she did a pretty good job as Lizzie Collins in Pride & Prejudice, Elizabeth Swann in Pirates of the Caribbean plus that aristocrat-turned nurse she played in Downton Abbey, sorry I mean Atonement.
Also, in that Chanel ad, she sweeps into an amazing boudoir, bosses it by snogging a hot-looking bloke, before leaping onto a moped and zooming off into the distance.
Going by the gossip columns, she seems effortlessly cool and fashionable.
But oh, Keira, what were you thinking?
The last time I felt this disappointed was when someone (thanks Oxford screenwriter Richard O Smith) told me all off-the-cuff banter in Have I Got News For You? is scripted.
The 29-year-old is co-starring with the equally gorgeous Benedict Cumberbatch in The Imitation Game, a new movie about code breaker Alan Turing.
Maths genius Turing did whizzy things with numbers to crack the code used by the Germans during World War II, saving the Allies and the world.
Keira plays his fellow code-breaker Joan Clarke and it’s great there’s a woman character who does more than just sharpen the male hero’s code-breaking pencils.
But this is where I’ve got a problem.Apparently, Keira has said: “I was really bad, really bad at all of it and I didn’t understand any of the maths.”
That’s not so terrible, after all, Turing was working at amazingly high-level maths which would fox most of us. It’s the next bit (if true) that’s made me want to weep and yell in equal measure.
“We had a specialist brought in and I got that feeling that I haven’t had since school doing maths.
“You sort of feel like you’ve died and I couldn't concentrate at all. He was such a nice man and it’s really interesting and I should have been paying attention but I didn’t.”
Arggghhhh. Here’s someone who’s a role model for teenage girls, someone they look up to.
And she’s suggesting maths in general is way too hard to grasp, boring and will send you to sleep. I really hope that quote is not true, as we need glamorous women to talk about their other figures: wouldn’t it be great if Kim Kardashian or Rhianna raved about having just calculated their tax return, or what a laugh it is trying to work out how much their 65 per cent discount at Armani is worth?
In fact, the more I think about it, the more I’m sure I’m on to something here.
Maybe this could be extended to re-jigging famous film titles, to big-up mental maths.
So, coming soon, to a cinema near you: Divisible Me; Snow White and the Seven Recurring Dwarfs; Quantum Physics of Solace; Last Tangent in Paris and The Da Vinci Code Breaker.
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