10 Embarrassing Times Movie Actors Tried To Be Badass

3. Keira Knightley - Domino

Green Street
New Line Cinema

Keira Knightley is often underestimated as an actress, and has shone in a variety of film roles over the years. What she’s not is an action star. If she was unconvincing in the Pirates Of The Caribbean franchise, she could at least fall back on the fact that this was a daft, swashbuckling franchise in which everyone played a cartoonish figure.

In Tony Scott’s Domino, meanwhile, she was playing a real person, Domino Harvey, the fashion model turned bounty hunter. It’s not hard to see why one would cast Knightley in this role - this is an unusual figure in a strange set of circumstances, and she had the look to pull it off.

What she didn’t have, at this point in her career, was the force of personality. Knightley circa 2005 was putting in reserved, quiet turns (to call her wooden would be unkind but not entirely unmerited). She looked ludicrously out of place toting a shotgun on the poster.

She could tell us that she was a bounty hunter in that cut glass accent of hers as many times as she wanted; that wasn’t going to make us convinced.

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Contributor

Yorkshire-based writer of screenplays, essays, and fiction. Big fan of having a laugh. Read more of my stuff @ www.twotownsover.com (if you want!)