LAWFUEL – The Law News Wire – The actress Keira Knightley accepted £3,000 libel damages yesterday over a newspaper article suggesting she was losing too much weight and could be anorexic. The 22-year-old Pirates of the Caribbean star believes the Daily Mail article in January was “deeply offensive and embarrassing” and had suggested she had “dishonestly sought to mislead the public” over whether she had a eating disorder.
Ms Knightley, who was filming in Wales yesterday and did not attend the High Court in London, has said she will match the award and donate it to the eating disorder and mental illness charity, Beat.
In the article, Rosalind Ponomarenko-Jones, who lost her daughter Sophie Mazurek to anorexia, discussed the impact of well known figures such as Ms Knightley on vulnerable young women.
A photograph of Ms Mazurek, who was 19 when she died in December, was printed next to one of Ms Knightley in a bikini. The article described the actress as “skinny” and said that “for ordinary young girls, attempting to emulate this image is often dangerous”.
