Keira Knightley – who has an 18-month-old daughter with husband James Righton – says she doesn’t get a lot of compliments in public, but rather a lot of mean-spirited comments.

The star claims it isn’t uncommon for people to walk up and share how much they “hate her face,” which she finds rather odd.

She shared with Harper’s Bazaar magazine: “Yesterday I had two really lovely people come up to me in the street and just say how much they like my work, which almost never happens.

[The angry ones] are very odd … It feels like you’re not meant to be walking down the street doing your shopping. Or they just hate your work, in which case they say, ‘I hate your work’. Or they hate your face, in which case they say, ‘I hate your face’.

But it’s more like a kind of jokey, ‘Oh God, I’ve always hated you’ Or, ‘I’ve always found your face so annoying.’ I’ve had that quite a few times. Like, ‘Oh sorry! Sorry about that.’ Yeah. So there’s still a couple of those, but not as much as it was.”

Despite the hatred, the star tries to carry a more glamorous image these days and often feels like a different person.

“I feel like they’re two very different people. And I quite like that. I like creating a character because that’s where I feel comfortable.”

On her days off, however, she prefers a more laid back style as she can “separate it all out a bit better.”

And while she often goes through periods of intense work and productivity, the actress then needs to recharge with “absolute nothingness.”

She explained: “I’m very ambitious and totally ambivalent at the same time. I do periods where I work a lot and then … it has to go to absolute nothingness.”