Keira Knightley

I´ve always had a thing for British actresses and Keira Knightley is no exception. There is just something so mesmerizing in those somehow brittle features dominated by strong jawline. Or maybe its the fact that - with correct make up - she reminds me so much of Natalie Portman. Anyway, as a doll collector, I often feel like I´m collecting people - go a head call me weird - and though that it would be nice to squeeze a little Keira of my own into a cookie jar for safe keeping! LOL.

So, when first I saw the head of a 1:6 scale Hot Toys "US Secret Service Female agent" action figure on eBay I instantly realized they were using the same sculpt they had used in their Movie Masterpiece series for Pirates of the Caribbean Elizabeth Swan figure, only that this one had rooted hair instead of plastic! I knew instantly I had to have it to be repainted as Keira.

Here is a picture of the head with its original paint:

The system they use for rooted hair is a bit weird but easy enough to reroot. The seam between two part behind the jaw line is not pretty, though. I had to do quite a lot of resculpting, sanding and painting to cover it.

This doll is the second proper celebrity doll repaint I´ve done - the first being the Takeshi Kaneshiro project I introduced on my last post. This time I did not take that many pictures of the repainting and sculpting process itself, but will try to keep this sort and just present to your the final results.

The first attempt:

I rerooted and repainted the head and modified an Monsieur Z doll bodies neck joint to fit the head - as shown on the Takeshi Kaneshiro post. The first version of the repaint became too severe and made her look like an old horsey tranny. The main issue was her hairline and for some time I pondered whether to give my Keira bangs just to cover it. Then someone commented on my flickr that she looked like Sandra Bernhard and the statement began to haunt me until all I could see in her was the ghastly Sandra - that lady just ain´t my cup of tea! After some photo research on the Internet I decided that she looks better without bangs and just deleted the first version all together.

The second version:

This time I tried to paint her as young, cute and innocent as possible and I hope it worked out better than the first attempt. I also used the photos of Keira that reminded me of Natalie Portman as reference I tried to make her seem a bit like a mixture of them both. I really prefer this one and we´ll see if she´ll be here to stay.


NOTE: If you want to try this at home you can easily find the head on eBay. It usually goes for 30-40usd and its original skin tone is pretty dark matching Colette´s (FR4, MB3). The head is pretty small though, so I recommend DG or MZ doll as a body donor - their proportions are a much better match for Keira as FR body might make her seem like a gargantuan amazone! Here I repainted her skin to match the FR2 Caucasian tone since its hard for me to even imagine a tanned Keira with her sensitive British skin - burned maybe! Lol. To find a good body donor consult my other blog, the Skin Tone Data Base for best match. Hope this was helpful! :)