Keira Knightley has a really lovely interview in the new issue of The Advocate. They ask her about a lot of her gay-friendly film and stage roles, and I guess I never realized how many of her films involved explicit or implicit female-on-female love. She gave the interview to promote Begin Again, the movie where she plays a rock star’s ex who begins her music career with a little help from Mark Ruffalo. You can read the full piece here and here are some highlights:

Working with Adam Levine: “Yeah, he’s a pretty sexy dude. He’s got a good body on him. He’s also very funny, which is always the most attractive thing about anybody. He had so much energy that he was literally bouncing off the walls, so it was great fun to work with him. He had never acted before, so he was constantly going, ‘Oh, I don’t know how to do this.’ He was a complete natural, of course, which is a bit annoying, really. But yeah, he certainly hasn’t been left short in the looks department.”

Being drawn to projects about complicated female friendships: “Well, female friendships are f–king extraordinary. They don’t have to be sexual to be intense love affairs. A breakup with a female friend can be more traumatic than a breakup with a lover. I’ve always been attracted to stories that look at the love-hate complexity of close female friendships. It’s ripe for drama. Did you see Frances Ha? That portrayed a female friendship I really understood.”

On her girl crush: “I just watched The Punk Singer, the documentary about Kathleen Hanna from Bikini Kill, so I actually have to go with her. She might be my top girl crush of all time, really. I love a riot grrrl.”

On The Imitation Game & Alan Turing: “I first read about him several years ago and I was appalled. It didn’t happen in my lifetime, but I felt quite ashamed. It’s an important story to tell. We have to look at what happened to this brilliant man because of his sexual orientation. He was destroyed, and we can’t allow that to happen again. We can’t let homophobia or bigotry take over and tear people apart. What was done to this great intellect in a court of law is an absolute travesty. As much progress as we’ve made, we must continue to fight to make people understand and value each other.”

Whether Georgiana Cavendish (Keira played her in The Duchess) was bisexual: “I think she was in love with that particular woman, and I think she could’ve had great sexual pleasure with a woman, as many women can. Sexuality is a funny thing, and sometimes labels don’t quite cover it.”

[From The Advocate]

I love what she says about female friendships and about bisexuality and labels. In the interview, she also talks about how liberal and LGBT-friendly her parents were and growing up, she never saw the LGBT community as anything other than completely acceptable. You can tell she’s very passionate about gay rights.

Photos courtesy of WENN.