Actress says she’d advise her daughter to be a lawyer to avoid the “heartbreaking rejection” of life as an actor. Hmmm…
Hollywood star Keira Knightley has given an interview to the latest edition of Glamour magazine — available on Monday but summarised in The Telegraph — in which she says she is going to encourage her daughter to become a lawyer or a doctor in order to safeguard her from the pain of rejection she has experienced in acting.
Here is Knightley’s quote in full:
“I should imagine that if she wanted to act, I wouldn’t have a choice but, no, I certainly wouldn’t recommend it.
“It can be completely heartbreaking for most people who do it, because the amount of rejection is enormous. And it doesn’t matter what kind of person you are, it’s impossible for that not to take a toll. Even if you’re successful, you still have to go through a shitload of rejection
“So I would say to my daughter: ‘Be a doctor or a lawyer – something stable and useful.’”
Clearly, Knightly had failed to consult the Law Society’s most recent statistical report before doing the interview. If she had, she’d have discovered that student enrolments with the Solicitors Regulation Authority soared towards 15,000 last year. The number of training contracts available? A mere 5,302.
Nor, it seems, did Knightly check the Bar Council’s 2014 Bar Barometer. If she had, she would have noted that in the most recent year for which statistics are available (2012) there were 1,732 enrolments on the Bar Professional Training Course (BPTC). The number of pupillages available? A mere 438.
Hardly figures to recommend the law as a route for the avoidance of “heartbreaking rejection”.
Keira Knightley: be a doctor or lawyer, not an actor [The Telegraph]