In her first post-baby interview, published in the September issue of the U.S. edition of Elle magazine, Keira reveals that the daughter she gave birth to in May is called Edie, a shortened form of Edith, which means "wealth, fortune" and "war."
The actress marked the 30th anniversary of the magazine — she turned 30 herself in March — with four collector's edition covers and an interview, in which she opens up about life as a new mother.
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"The love thing is astonishing," she said of her daughter. "It's a very primal, primal love. That's quite extraordinary. And the ability to have no sleep and continue going. It's not pleasant — I never thought that I could actually do it for the amount of time that I've done it."
During the interview Keira opened up about how pregnancy and childbirth can be a really empowering experience. "As a woman, you hate certain parts of your body," she said. "You go through those periods where you look in the mirror and you think, 'Oh, if only I had different legs or arms or whatever.'
"You go through pregnancy and labour and then feeding the kid and you go, 'Wow, my body is totally amazing, and I'm never going to not like it again, because it did this, and this is f**king extraordinary.'"
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The Imitation Game star also said that while her career was hitting the big time during her early 20s her personal life wasn't such as success: "As a person, you're changing so much and you're trying to figure stuff out," she said. "Some people go wild and have a great time and throw caution to the wind, and I was the complete opposite. I was very shy. It took me a lot of years to try and stop pleasing a lot of people and allow myself to have fun.
"It's the difficult thing of getting out of your own head. To stop going, 'Oh, there's something I should be doing, there's a way I should be behaving, I should be dressing…' All of those shoulds, you can drown in them."
She even admitted turning to therapy, saying: "I highly recommend it. I don't do it at the moment. But in my early twenties when I found everything completely overwhelming, 100 percent, I did it! Are you kidding? I think when you're in those moments in your life, and you want to get through them… you have to do whatever it is to help you get over it. You have to give it a go. Try anything that might help."