Johnny Depp Said That Kissing 21-Year-Old Keira Knightley Was Awkward

The ongoing legal battle between Johnny Depp and Amber Heard is set to continue with another major court case that’ll bring the former couple’s private lives further out into the open. For one, The Hollywood Reporter has shared that Depp will be obligated to share “all responsive communications” with his ex-partners, whom the outlet says includes Angelina Jolie, Marion Cotillard and Pirates of the Caribbean co-star Keira Knightley.

Depp hasn’t been officially confirmed to have dated any of these actresses, though, so Vanity Fair trawled through the internet to dredge up any evidence one way or the other. In their article, VF discovered an old interview with the actor via The Evening Standard in which he admits that his and Knightley’s kiss for 2006’s Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest was “awkward” due to their significant age difference.

“Kissing someone you are not romantically involved with is always awkward, but the fact that Keira is 20-something years younger than me made it infinitely more awkward. Still, she was a good sport about it, and we did what we had to do.”

The interesting thing is that Amber Heard is actually one year younger than the British star, though she was in her mid-twenties when her and Depp first entered into a relationship, which is older than Knightley was during the making of the Disney franchise. Knightley, for her part, did not find the kiss awkward at all and gushed about it while speaking to TMZ back in the day, as uncovered by Inside The Magic.

“I couldn’t ask for a better kissing scene with Johnny Depp actually, I think my 14-year-old self was yelping with pleasure …” Knightley said. “It was fantastic! What more can a girl ask for? I’ve got Johnny Depp and Orlando Bloom, and I get to kiss both of them. It’s wonderful!”

Knightley was 17 when making the first Pirates movie, 2003’s The Curse of the Black Pearl, and 21 when Dead Man’s Chest came out. The second pic was filmed back-to-back with the third entry in the series, At World’s End, which released in 2007. A decade later, Knightley returned as Elizabeth Swann once more for a cameo in 2017’s Dead Men Tell No Tales. However, it’s not believed that she’ll be back for Disney’s new Pirates projects.