Every celebrity who spent a chunk of their lives on the red carpet has an embarrassing wardrobe malfunction story. Thankfully for Keira Knightley, her own disaster happened before the cameras caught her. Otherwise, everyone would have seen her “full-on naked body,” the Pirates of the Caribbean star said.
Several years ago, before the 2005 British Independent Film Awards, Knightley was getting into a Herve Leger dress, “one of those bandage-y dresses,” she told PEOPLE. “I went to step out of the door and it split from the bottom to the top – my entire body was out,” she said. “It was just full-on naked body.” Knightley quickly realized the dress she tried on was just too small.
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Fortunately for the two-time Oscar-nominee, two Herve Leger dresses were delivered to her apartment before the awards. This was also at a time when Knightley was being constantly hounded by the paparazzi, so she was lucky that the malfunction happened before she left home. “Thank God it [didn’t] happen on the red carpet because it could have happened at any point that evening and I was incredibly fortunate that it happened when it did,” she said.
Knightley made it to the awards show on time to pick up the Variety Award and wore a high-neck white bandaged mini dress that stayed intact the entire time. The British Independent Film Awards also nominated Knightley for her performances in The Duchess (2008), Never Let Me Go (2010), and The Imitation Game (2014).
Elsewhere in her latest interview with PEOPLE, Knightley admitted to crying to a cake that appeared in The Great British Baking Show this season. “It literally had me bawling on the sofa,” she said of a cake designed by Lizzie Acker, who is dyslexic. Knightley is as well. “Lizzie baked a dyslexic cake and said it was like the inside of her brain. It was such a beautiful cake, it made me cry,” Knightley said. “I totally sat there with my kid crying at Bake Off because this cake was so wonderful and I thought it was such a wonderful idea.”
The Pride & Prejudice star added that her daughter Edie, 6, teases her about how emotional she gets with television shows. “Anything like that, my kid is just like, ‘Oh, my God. What is the matter with you?’” she told PEOPLE. Knightley and husband James Righton are also parents to daughter Delilah, 2.
Knightley’s newest movie is Silent Night, which was released on AMC+ earlier this month. She is now working on Matt Ruskin’s new film about the Boston Strangler.
