8. Keira Knightley
When he was just starting out, Paul Newman took out an ad in a Hollywood trade paper apologising for his own performance in 1954's The Silver Chalice. Thirty years later, he was an Oscar winner. He wrote that apology early in his career, before he aged into a movie star, improving his skills from a terrible low into eventual monumental highs. Somehow, around the time she was (creepily) getting off with Orlando Bloom and generally being wooden for the first Pirates of the Caribbean film, Keira Knightley was only 17. Owing to the feeling that she's been around forever, it's easy to forget Knightley still hasn't left her 20s. She's one of the most hated women in show business (a bad actor whose beauty has bought her into big movies, goes the standard argument), but one who unfairly receives little recognition for some of her better acting gigs. Just take into account Knightley's work with Joe Wright, for one thing, the triple threat of Pride & Prejudice, Atonement and Anna Karenina all offering Knightley variations on strong-willed but vulnerable women, and all of which she knocks out of the park. Then there was her blistering, Fassbender-spanking turn in A Dangerous Method last year, her animalistic depiction of a mentally unhinged woman dividing critics but ultimately proving Knightley was willing to take risks and look potentially ridiculous in the process. Her vast improvement since Curse of the Black Pearl suggests she could have more to come. After all, she is only 27 - take a look at Tom Hardy basically failing to act
at the same age, in comparison to his status today as one of the best and most versatile performers in the business. Basically, Knightley is still too young to be written off.