They were broke and living on a diet of lentils, bread and tomatoes when Keira was conceived. (Her father challenged her mother to sell a script or a play before she had a second child. It was at that point Sharman Macdonald wrote her first — and...

The abiding image in David Cronenberg's new film A Dangerous Method is of Keira Knightley, her jaw thrust out alarmingly as she howls out the dark secrets of a confused childhood to her psychiatrist: Her father spanked her, she cries, and "it excited me.