Keira Knightley feels she gets more support as an actress in America than at home in the UK.

The Pirates Of The Caribbean star - who allowed herself to be spanked while tied semi-naked to a bed for her new film A Dangerous Method - admitted to GQ she sometimes gets upset by criticism of her work.

Knightley said: "The Americans are generally a lot more supportive.

"They generally like the work a lot more than they do here. It is what it is, I suppose. It could just be that I'm not to a lot of people's tastes. Which is fine."

She went on: "Well it's not, obviously. You want to be to everyone's taste... But. I think it's better to do your own thing rather than try to please everyone and just be this mushy thing in the middle..

"Sometimes it's like water off a duck's back, and sometimes it really hurts... and then you go away and cry for an hour or so, and then you pick yourself up again."

The 26-year-old actress also revealed all she could remember about her turn as Elizabeth Swann in the first three Pirates Of The Caribbean blockbusters was that it was "wet and hot". She also claimed she was given no script to act from.

She added: "The second two took two years, but in my memory, they've just been mushed into a big, hot, wet thing.

"When we started shooting the third one, there was no script. You'd literally be given a scrap of paper and told, 'Say that'. You'd go, 'OK, but where am I? What does this mean?' And they'd go 'Don't worry about it, just say it.'"

The full interview is in GQ, out now.