Originally appeared on E! Online
It is a truth universally acknowledged that Keira Knightley is a devoted mom.
The "Pride and Prejudice" star, who shares kids Edie, 9, and Delilah, 4, with husband of 11 years James Righton, recently detailed a trait she has in common with one of her daughters.
“We have a dyslexic kid,” Knightley shared on the Aug. 5 episode of the "Ruthie’s Table 4" podcast. “Her memory is absolutely amazing.”
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And her husband, also featured on the episode, added, “She’ll memorize the book, basically—it’s amazing.”
Knightley—who herself was diagnosed with dyslexia at age six—also noted how her own experience with the disability actually led her to be an actor.
“The school said, ‘Look she can’t read at all and we need a carrot to dangle in front of her, do you know if there’s something that she wants?’” Knightley recalled her teachers telling her parents. “And they said, ‘Well, she wants an agent.’”
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The 39-year-old admitted that getting an agent—and starting to act—was exactly what she needed to motivate her.
“It was always, ‘If your grades go up, you’re allowed to keep on acting, but if they go down, then it stops,’” she noted. “It did go up, though. It was a carrot!”
And while Knightley eventually made it to the top of her class before leaving school at 15 to pursue acting full time, she admitted that she still struggles with reading.
“Still, sight reading I find really hard,” she admitted. “It really bounces. Basically, I record it and listen to it—and that’s how I learn it.”
And like her daughter, Knightley has an impressive memory. Previously, the "Love Actually" actress also noted that her disability actually helped her propel to the top of her field.
As she recalled to the Boston Globe ahead of her breakout performance in 2005’s "Pride and Prejudice," “I was so single-minded about acting.”
Of course, whether her daughter will follow in her acting footsteps is to be determined. After all, Knightley’s past comments prove that at least her older daughter may have her eyes set on something completely different.
“She wanted to be a dentist, and now apparently she's been to the zoo and she wants to be a gorilla, so we'll see,” Knightley joked to People of Edie’s career aspirations in 2018. “I'm hoping for a dentist. It might be a bit tricky if she wanted to be a gorilla when she grew up."
