Keira Knightley Was 'Petrified' to Do This One Stunt in Pirates of the Caribbean

When Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl was in the making, Keira Knightley, who signed up to portray damsel in distress-turned-Pirate King Elizabeth Swann, first thought the role was going to be a piece of cake.

Signing up to play Elizabeth, the governor's daughter, Keira thought her tasks would be limited to wearing nice dresses, riding in carriages, and occasionally gasp when the pirate fights get too brutal. Needless to say, she was very, very wrong about that.

Elizabeth Swann proved to be just as much of a troublemaker as her love interest, Orlando Bloom's Will Turner. Literally, the first thing she did in the franchise was enter into negotiations with the pirates, thus ending up in their captivity and sailing off to lift the curse she had nothing to do with. Oh well.

"Actually, I had a lot of stunt work to do!" Knightley shared in Making of Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. "Which, for somebody as lazy as me, has been rather challenging."

The most challenging thing, however, has been stuck in Knightley's mind. Remember the scene when the pirates, no longer believing Elizabeth was of Turner blood, make her walk the plank and jump off into the Caribbean sea?

Yeah, the actress was absolutely petrified to do that particular stunt.

"I've been standing on this plank for two days, absolutely petrified. I mean, completely petrified. So, when the time came to jump off, Gore, the director, said to me 'You know, you don't have to do this, we can get Sonya, your stunt girl, to do it.' I was like 'I was standing up there for two days, do you really think that I'm not gonna jump off this thing?'" Keira recalled.

So she did; and having overcome the fear of jumping off, Knightley said she came up smiling after landing in the water! The actress revealed she was "so glad" that she managed to do it — and that she came out alive and not eaten by a shark. Her words, not ours.

See, that's your perk of being an actor: you get to do something that completely petrifies you and end up feeling glad that you're not dead! Yay, we guess.

Source: Making of Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl