Is Keira Knightley the anti–Lindsay Lohan?

“I think fame is a very strange thing. You learn to find ways around it, as in any job. You have to have a route to self-preservation,” the Atonement star told Interview magazine.

While fame took Lohan on a prima donna roller-coaster ride of drugs, booze, arrests and nudity before she entered rehab this summer, the attention that accompanies Hollywood stardom hasn’t gone to Knightley’s head. “My ambition hasn’t changed.”

On her maturity, the 22-year-old said that she never liked being a teenager. “I never felt comfortable being in a group of giggly girls … So I suppose I never really wanted to explore it, whereas I did want to be a woman.”

Unlike Lohan, whose career has stalled since her 2004 role in Mean Girls, Knightley’s tempered maturity has only paid off. “I think I’m in an incredibly fortunate position, because I actually get offered amazing roles and the opportunity to work with extraordinary people,” the Oscar-nominated star said in the mag’s new issue. “If you become an actor, then that’s what you want.”

Instead of acting out as a diva in front of the paparazzi and club-goers every night, Knightley harnesses it for the big screen. “I’m fascinated by tragedies or dramas. It’s the drama queen in me. I want to explore them, partly because I don’t want to explore them in my real life, I guess.”

But that doesn’t mean Knightley feels like celebrites have a responsibility to act a certain way. “I don’t believe in role models. I don’t believe that any person can be put up there as being better than any other person. Personally, I think I have the right to make as many mistakes as I like without having to feel guilty about a young girl going, ‘Wow, you’re making that mistake, so should I.’ People are cleverer than that.”

(source)