Keira: Making an impression?

London, Jan. 22: Keira Knightley, Britain’s best known young actress, today instituted legal action against a newspaper which she says had suggested that she had not been honest about admitting she was suffering from an eating disorder.

The 21-year-old actress, who had stardom thrust on her after director Gurinder Chadha cast her opposite Parminder Nagra in Bend It Like Beckham, has certainly looked very thin in recent photographs.

However, Knightly, now one of Britain’s hottest properties after her appearance in Pirates of the Caribbean, has insisted she suffers from neither anorexia nor an eating disorder.

The Daily Mail, one of Britain’s most powerful tabloid newspapers which Knightley is suing, will undoubtedly argue that celebrities have a duty to be honest — simply because millions of impressionable young girls seek to copy their body shapes.

The offending article appeared on January 11 this year and carried an interview with a mother, Rosalind Ponomarenko-Jones, 46, from Powys, Wales, who lost her daughter, Sophie Mazurek, 19, to anorexia. According to the Daily Mail, the mother “blames the fashion industry for Sophie’s death” which occurred last month.

The accompanying photograph is of a skinny Knightley, alongside the headline: “If pictures like this one of Keira carried a health warning, my darling daughter might have lived.”

The case against Associated Newspapers, publishers of the Daily Mail, is expected to go to jury trial at London’s high court either late this year or early next year unless it is settled out of court.

The court will have to decide whether Sophie’s death can be linked in any way to Knightley and if the actress has been honest. Privacy issues will also be raised.

Her solicitor, Simon Smith, of law firm Schillings, said the article “carried a photograph of Ms Knightley, taken without her consent, whilst wearing a bikini and relaxing on a beach on holiday”.

He said: “The article made reference to what it perceived to be Ms Knightley’s very slim appearance.... The article then reported the recent, tragic death of a teenage girl who suffered from anorexia and contained an interview with the girl’s mother. We wish to make clear that Ms Knightley has the deepest sympathy for the girl’s family.”

But he added: “However, Ms Knightley has publicly denied suggestions that she might be anorexic or have a similar eating disorder, including in a prominent way at a well-publicised press conference to mark the European premiere of Pirates Of The Caribbean 2, in London last summer.”

He went on: “Accordingly, in the proceedings, Ms Knightley will argue that the Mail’s article suggests that she has dishonestly sought to mislead the public about whether she has anorexia or similar eating disorder and will show that she does not have anorexia; and further will challenge the suggestion that she is responsible and to blame for the tragic death of the teenage girl by setting a bad example.”

The article seeks to explain how young girls are vulnerable to the dictates of the fashion industry and, in particular, role models.

Sophie’s mother, Rosalind, says in her Daily Mail interview that Knightley, like Sophie, had never been a big girl. “All I can think of is that she must be under tremendous pressure from the fashion and movie industries to aspire to an impossibly stick-thin look. That pressure is passed through celebrities like Keira and Victoria Beckham on to vulnerable girls like Sophie.”

If Sophie’s mother chooses to give evidence in court on behalf of the Daily Mail, somehow implicating Knightley, a very popular and talented actress, in her daughter’s death, it will prove to be a dynamite and important case.