Keira Knightley groped four times in bars

Actress Keira Knightley also said she was mostly on the losing end when it came to pay. PHOTO: SHAW ORGANISATION

LOS ANGELES - Keira Knightley has never been sexually abused on a film set but the actress said she has been groped four times in bars.

In an interview with trade publication Variety, she added: "I think everyone has battled their fair share of monsters. It's not just actresses. It's teachers; it's lawyers.

"I'm not talking about rape but I'm talking about the people who had been grabbed in pubs or whose breasts had been fondled by somebody they didn't know."

Knightley, who stars in Colette, a drama about the French novelist that will premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, also said she was mostly on the losing end when it came to pay.

"For the first time recently, I got paid a little more than my male co-stars. My approach has been not to ask because I would have been really angry, which is stupid. I've been putting my head in the sand."

That low-profile stand also made life hard for her when she became a star at 18 with Pirates Of The Caribbean.

"I'm not an extrovert so I found that level of scrutiny and that level of fame really hard.

"It was an age where you are becoming, you haven't become, and you need to make mistakes... and it took many years of therapy to figure it out."

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