Keira Knightley is the daughter of English actor Will Knightley and Scottish screenwriter Sharman Macdonald . His father admired a Russian skater named Kiera and this is what name she should have brought her mother but was deceived by spelling the five letters of the first name to Vital 5 .
She has an older brother, Caleb, born in 1979 . She spends most of her childhood in Richmond , a district of Greater London . Diagnosed hyperactive and dyslexic at the age of 6, she strives to have good grades at school to please her parents but says that as a child, she "only thought of the profession of actress" 6 . She appears on stage in several amateur productions, including After Juliet (written by her mother) and United States (written by her drama teacher at the time).
