{"id":222624,"date":"2025-10-24T12:24:12","date_gmt":"2025-10-24T12:24:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/222624\/"},"modified":"2025-10-24T12:24:12","modified_gmt":"2025-10-24T12:24:12","slug":"how-keira-knightleys-brilliant-parenting-hack-turned-into-a-picture-book","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/222624\/","title":{"rendered":"How Keira Knightley’s brilliant parenting hack turned into a picture book"},"content":{"rendered":"

Keira Knightley<\/a> is adding \u201cauthor\u201d to her resum\u00e9.<\/p>\n

The \u201cAtonement<\/a>\u201d star has just published her first children\u2019s book, \u201cI Love You Just the Same<\/a>,\u201d which is out now in her native UK and will be released stateside next summer by Gallery Kids\/Simon & Schuster.<\/p>\n

The picture book is both written and illustrated by Knightley, 40, who tells a whimsical story about a young girl that wishes her new baby sister would be carried away by birds. But when it actually happens, the guilt-ridden girl embarks on a journey to retrieve her little sibling.<\/p>\n

The project was inadvertently born roughly five years ago, thanks to Knightley\u2019s two daughters with husband James Righton: Edie, 10, and Delilah, 6.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a complete accident,\u201d Knightley tells USA TODAY, in a recent interview for her Netflix thriller \u201cThe Woman in Cabin 10<\/a>\u201d (now streaming). \u201cMy eldest kid didn\u2019t sleep very much, and we tried many different nighttime routines to try and get her to sleep. Eventually, I came on this idea that if I drew her a picture every night, then when she’d gone to bed, I’d leave it in her room.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Keira<\/p>\n

Keira Knightley attends the New York premiere of “Boston Strangler” on March 14, 2023. The two-time Oscar nominee just released her first children’s book.<\/p>\n

When Edie would \u201cwake up, she knew that I’d been thinking about her,\u201d Knightley continues. \u201cSo every night before bed, she’d tell me what picture she wanted me to draw.\u201d<\/p>\n

The pictures got more and more creative over time, as Edie asked her mom to draw babies, cats and birds.<\/p>\n

\u201cThen one day, when her sister was about 6 months old \u2013 she\u2019d been crying a lot because she was teething \u2013 she said, \u2018Can the bird take the baby away?\u2019\u201d Knightley says with a laugh. A story began to take shape, \u201cand I thought, \u2018Maybe I can push this a bit further and make it more universal about sibling rivalry and separation anxiety.\u2019 So that’s what I ended up doing and I loved every bit of it. It was such a joyous thing to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Coincidentally, \u201cI Love You Just the Same\u201d was greenlit by the publisher the same day Knightley started production on Season 1 of her Netflix spy series \u201cBlack Doves<\/a>.\u201d The actress has a trick to memorizing lines, where she records her dialogue and then listens back.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

The cover of Keira Knightley’s new book “I Love You Just the Same,” which will be released in the U.S. next year.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat’s literally what I was doing the whole time making \u2018Black Doves,\u2019\u201d Knightley says. \u201cI would listen to my lines while I was drawing the illustrations for the book. It was kind of a weird juxtaposition: drawing a lovely pigeon at the same time as I\u2019m learning lines where I’m about to kill somebody. (Laughs.) It was quite nice to have those two things going on at once.\u201d<\/p>\n

The two-time Oscar nominee jokes it took her \u201ctoo long\u201d to make the book, in that Edie has now grown out of it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI started it when she was 5, because we were doing it in a way where it was just between us and it wasn\u2019t this whole thing,\u201d Knightley says. \u201cShe\u2019s so bored by it now. She\u2019s like, \u2018Has that book come out yet?\u2019 And I\u2019m like, what is the matter with you?!\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Keira<\/p>\n

Keira Knightley is now shooting Season 2 of her Netflix spy series “Black Doves.”<\/p>\n

Delilah, meanwhile, has given her a thumbs up.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe was a baby when we started and she\u2019s 6 now,\u201d Knightley says. \u201cShe\u2019s like, \u2018Well done, Mummy! I like your book!\u2019 And I\u2019m like, \u2018Thank you!\u2019 (Laughs.) That\u2019s what I need.\u201d<\/p>\n

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Keira Knightley says first children\u2019s book was a \u2018complete accident\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Keira Knightley is adding \u201cauthor\u201d to her resum\u00e9. The \u201cAtonement\u201d star has just published her first children\u2019s book,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":222625,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[457,13468,95135,96,95134,41526,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-222624","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-childrens-book","10":"tag-edie","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-james-righton","13":"tag-keira-knightley","14":"tag-uk","15":"tag-united-kingdom","16":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222624","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=222624"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222624\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/222625"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=222624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=222624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=222624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}