Keira Knightley is perhaps most recognized for her period collaborations with director Joe Wright (Pride and Prejudice, Atonement, Anna Karenina), but she’d like to be known for something else as well: her love of female filmmakers.

“It’s nice working with women, because you don’t have to do this loveable, soft version of what the female sex has to be,” she told the UK’s Sunday Times. “It also allows men to understand women, as opposed to them being something pink and fluffy. There’s a weird view of femininity we put into our culture that has nothing to do with the experience of being a woman.”

Knightley, who’s currently back in theaters in the musical romance Begin Again, became a star after co-starring in Gurinder Chadha’s Bend It Like Beckham. In 2012, she appeared in Lorene Scafaria’s Seeking a Friend for the End of World and will return to theaters the big screen on September 26 in Lynn Shelton’s Laggies. (Read Women and Hollywood’s interview with Lynn Shelton about Laggies.)

Knightley promises to avoid the costume dramas for the time being, as being fitted into corsets and wigs was so exhausting. “The bitch is the time spent getting ready,” Knightley commented. “It was the practicality of life that made me think, after Anna Karenina, how this would be nicer if I got two hours more sleep a day.”

[via The Telegraph]