【Underwater Love】

Keira Knightley is Underwater Lovevoicing her concern over the way women are treated in films.

In an interview with Variety,the 32-year-old actress discussed how she tends to shy away from taking on modern-day films "because the female characters nearly always get raped."

"I always find something distasteful in the way women are portrayed, whereas I’ve always found very inspiring characters offered to me in historical pieces," Knightley said, noting there's been some improvement over the years but the industry still has a lot of work to do.

"I’m suddenly being sent scripts with present-day women who aren’t raped in the first five pages and aren’t simply there to be the loving girlfriend or wife," she went on, explaining the appeal of her recent role in Colette, where she plays a woman overcoming gender barriers in 1890s France.

"It’s wonderful to play inspiring women and to get their stories and their voices out there," the actress said, adding there "certainly are parallels" to women fighting for their rights in today's society.

"The fact that the movie is coming out right now isn’t a surprise ... Women’s stories are suddenly viewed as important."

Knightley, who's acted in several films related to The Weinstein Company, such asBegin Againand The Imitation Game,claims her relationship with cofounder Harvey Weinstein had always been professional and she wasn't aware of any allegations at the time. Weinstein has been accused of sexual harassment by dozens of women, some of whom say he raped them. He denies allegations of nonconsensual sex.

"I was aware of his reputation of being a bully. He was famous for phoning people in the middle of the night and screaming at them," she said. "He didn’t do that to me, and he certainly never asked me for massages or anything like that.”

Since learning of the allegations, the actress has become a passionate supporter of the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements.

"What was fascinating about the #MeToo movement was I was sitting with friends who weren’t in the industry, and there wasn’t one of us who hadn’t been assaulted at some point," she said. "We’d never had that conversation before. That was an eye-opener."

And as for additional gender equality within the industry? The pay gap is definitely on Knightley's radar.

"For the first time recently I got paid a little bit more than my male co-stars. I haven’t tried to push back on it much. I think I probably should have," she said. "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, I’m afraid."