Actor Keira Knightley covers the March 9, 2020 issue of Porter Edit, styled by Helen Broadfoot in Dries Van Noten, Givenchy, Jil Sander, Lanvin, Loewe, Totême, Valentino and more crisp spring silhouettes. Photographer Vanina Sorrenti is behind the lens for the fashion shoot, with Katie Berrington conducting the interview ‘Acting Out’.

Keira Knightly is a feminist in word and deed, marryng James Righton in 2013 and always standing tall with an articulate voice for women’s rights and a more expansive vision of women’s roles in society. The couple has two daughters, and Berrington finds Knightley in London ready to promote her latest movie ‘Misbehviour’ in which she plays feminist activist Sally Alexander. In 1970, Alexander and other Women’s Liberation Movement members stormed the stage at the 1970 Miss World pageant.

Jennifer Hosten (1970 Miss World) and Gugu Mbatha-Raw, who plays Jennifer in ‘Misbehaviour’, at the World Premiere at ‘The Ham Yard Hotel, London on March 9, 2020. Via Joanne Davidson for Pure Granada.

The pageant was “the first time in its history that a woman of color – Jennifer Hosten of Grenada (played by Gugu Mbatha-Raw) – won the competition. In the era of apartheid, Pearl Jansen – who had to be referred to as Miss Africa South, because there was a white Miss South Africa already in the contest – was a runner-up.”

Above Keira Knightley talks about the movie and women’s rights activism with Rich Phippen. Google also delivers The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw’s review of the film. adds this background information and critical opinion:

The objectification of women’s bodies is hardly a thing of the past, but this film brings us back to the bizarre way in which this contest turned it into a quasi-polite ritual, with rosettes on the hips and even – unbelievably – numbered discs on the wrists, a horrible touch that really did make it look like a cattle market. The 1970 event was disrupted by more than just flour. An Angry Brigade bomb the night before (quite unconnected with the feminist protest) raised the temperature, and there was also a question mark over the propriety of putting Grenada’s prime minister Eric Gairy on the judging panel – the film shows Hawes’s Julia Morley stitching up this arrangement over whiskies at the Commonwealth Club, apparently to get lucrative TV rights in Caribbean markets. But Mbatha-Raw’s warm, wry performance as the embattled Miss Grenada depicts someone who has risen above both the demeaning absurdities of beauty shows and all the rackety dealing that is happening behind her back.”

The film ‘Misbehaviour’ is also open in America — you can probably get a seat with 6’ of space all around you. Leslie Felperin adds a female critic’s perspective for The Hollywood Reporter.

Keira Knightley’s Porter Edit fashion story continues.