While there were certainly plenty of far bigger roles in her future, including a couple of billion dollar grossing Pirates of the Caribbean films, you can perhaps forgive Keira Knightley for not remembering all the details of her appearance in The Phantom Menace, filmed back in 1997 when she was 12 years old.
As the journalist spoke about the character Padme, a visibly confused Knightley asked: “Wait a minute… who did I play? Was I not Padme?”
The interviewer then informed Knightley that she had in fact played Sabe, one of Queen Amidala’s (Natalie Portman) most important handmaidens, who later becomes a decoy.
“Do you know, I saw the film once when… I think I was 12 when I did it, and I saw it the year after, and I’ve never seen it again,” Knightley said. “OK, so I was Sabe and I didn’t die.”
Film fans might be inclined to compare the incident to Gwyneth Paltrow’s notorious revelation that she’d forgotten she was in Spider-Man: Homecoming. However, as Knightley points out, she has a slightly better excuse given the number of film roles she’s played in the 21 years since The Phantom Menace was released. In March, she revealed that the headdress she wore for the role was so heavy that it gave her a headache.
“And I remember being in the background for such a long time that I’d actually fallen asleep,” she said. “I was just sitting in a chair, and I was in the background, but I couldn’t keep my eyes open. I really remember that. But apart from that, I don’t remember anything else about it.”
