Here’s Keira Knightley being very unstar-like: wearing her own clothes, when we meet at a club in East London; the weather is dull and, strange to relate for the global box office draw, she’s got no immediate work lined up.

But Keira - fresh from a holiday in Bali with her beau Rupert Friend - looks absolutely radiant, dressed simply in checked shirt, jeans and boots, and carting an enormous shoulder bag with tassles, buckles, bells and, for all I know, whistles.

Apart from the impending release of new film The Duchess, she is footloose and fancy-free. But she’s not despondent.

‘It’s good to step back sometimes and live life.

‘I mean, you don’t have to have murdered to play a murderer, but it is important to experience a bit of real life if I’m going to be any good at what I do.

‘I suppose I’m very aware that with the particular field of the industry I’m in, it isn’t for ever,’ she tells me.

But then she adds that she wants to grow old disgracefully and have a career that endures, like those of Judi Dench, Helen Mirren and Vanessa Redgrave.

It infuriates her that older women aren’t appreciated in this country as they are in, say, France and Italy.

‘I read articles sometimes and it’s women tearing apart other women.

‘You certainly don’t see a picture of a man of 60 standing up there with another picture of how he looked at 20 with a caption saying: “Look what happened to him! Isn’t he disgusting now?” ‘ she says, recalling an item savaging Faye Dunaway because she didn’t look the same as she did 40 years ago, in Bonnie And Clyde.

‘Yet we also find it disgusting that women have cosmetic surgery.

‘You never quite know what you’re meant to do. People age - that’s what happens.

‘I think it would be great to see more older actresses playing characters who are doing amazing things.

‘It’s boring to see movies featuring women in their 20s all the time - I don’t just want to have a romantic, 20-year-old, silly girl in films all the time,’ she says, laughing at herself as she says it.

In fact, Keira does play a young woman, though not a silly one - Regency beauty and socialite Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire - in Saul Dibbs’s triumph The Duchess, a film I can see as an Oscar and Bafta contender on all fronts.

‘Georgiana had no power whatsoever, but she managed to create herself as a force in politics,’ she tells me.

Her own politics are her own business she says, smartly cutting me off before I venture in that direction, although she allows that she has been following the American presidential elections - Barack Obama in particular.

Her information on the subject comes from papers and books. She doesn’t watch TV - although she admits to being hooked on the HBO series The Wire, which she’s watching on DVD.

‘That’s where my money goes: documentary and drama DVDs. The books are for work and pleasure.

‘I don’t have any formal education so I’ve taken it upon myself to try and not be as ignorant as I was,’ she says.

Where else does her money go?

‘I spend it on very good food and I’m very fortunate to have a lot of flowers,’ she says.

I wonder if she has the blooms flown in on a private jet from some exotic spot like one or two actresses I have known.

‘Who does that? Do tell!

‘I have one bouquet of flowers a week, which is a complete extravagance, from a florist down the street. It’s nice to have flowers in the flat.

‘My parents taught me the value of money. I don’t take it for granted and, to tell you the truth, I don’t have very expensive tastes.

‘Don’t get me wrong: occasionally I might splash out, but it seems wasteful to buy unnecessary things.’

She rubbishes reports that last year she pocketed $33 million. ‘Wow, that would be nice! I’d have a very big house and I’d buy the dresses I borrow for the red carpet.

‘I’m very lucky at the moment, but not that lucky.’

She admits that she could earn more if she made a constant stream of big-budget Hollywood fare like the Pirates films.

‘But when you do films like The Edge Of Love and The Duchess there are no big pay days - you do them because you want to do the work, and to work with certain directors. My ambition isn’t to buy loads of property.’

Anything tucked away is for her bus-pass years but, she adds: ‘I want to be doing this when I’m old, without any fuss.’