Charlie Rose: What was the dark period?
Keira Knightley: The dark period. The dark period, I think I had a lot of success very early on and I was incredibly fortunate for that success. I don’t know that I dealt with it - I dealt with it in the way that I could.
CR: How was that?
KK: Which was kind of shutting myself away and sort of trying to not deal with it really. And I think I got to a moment where I just went “this is all just a bit too… I just can’t deal with any of this, I don’t want to deal with any of this” and took a step back and sort of went off and didn’t work for a year.
CR: What did you do during that year?
KK: What did I do… I took French lessons, I lived in Paris for a bit, I went to Spain, I went to Italy, I went to Germany. I sort of did a lot of Europe and read a lot of books. Mostly about feminism.
CR: Really? Why, just understanding where women were today?
KK: Yeah, kind of. A lot of that.
CR: Did you develop a greater appreciation of sort of, where women are, the empowerment of women?
KK: Yeah, I also went “I think there’s a lot of work to be done.” But yeah, absolutely - I did a lot of that. But I think it was hugely, I left school at 16 so I don’t have a college [experience] - so I felt like I wanted to sort of take a year out and read really. It was fun. So I came out of that and started working again.

Keira Knightley on Charlie Rose - Nov. 16, 2012