Bookworm: Keira Knightley says she feels she has to prove she's not stupid by reading more because she missed out on university

Even the most dedicated university students may have dreamt of swapping essays and books for a life as a Hollywood star.

But after bringing some of literature's most famous heroines alive on the big screen Keira Knightley has revealed how she envies her contemporaries who have university degrees.

The Oscar-nominated star of Atonement and Pride and Prejudice said missing out on university has left her 'with a chip on her shoulder' and she hopes to prove herself to be brainy by reading more.

In an interview with Tatler magazine the 23-year-old said: 'I am completely uneducated.

'Not going to university did give me an incredible driving force because it leaves you with a slight chip on your shoulder.

'It makes me feel I am going to read absolutely everything so I can prove I am not stupid.'

Although Knightley was diagnosed with dyslexia aged six and is only able to read slowly, her current reading list includes Germaine Greer's The Female Eunuch and feminist writer Mary Wollstonecraft.

She is also working her way through a biography of Albert Speer, the man known as the first architect of the Third Reich, and a history of the Vietnam War.

Knightley dropped out of school at 17, before taking her A-levels, after landing a role in a television adaptation of Doctor Zhivago.

In the same year she got her big break in Bend It Like Beckham and went on to star as Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice in 2005

This year she starred as Dylan Thomas's lover Vera Phillips in The Edge of Love.

Knightley will next be on screen as scandalous 18th century aristocrat Georgiana, in The Duchess - an adaptation of Amanda Foreman's best-selling biography of the Duchess of Devonshire.

Knightley said: 'I saw Georgiana as this courageous person who was in a marriage that was like a cage dropped top of her, forcing her to fight her way out. The film is also partly about the power of female manipulation, which was then a woman's only weapon.'

Girl power: Keira Knightley on the set of The Duchess in which she plays a scandalous 18th century aristocrat

The film premieres next month and Knightley has already been tipped for another Oscar nomination.

The Teddington-born star also plans to appear on stage but not in the West End, because she often fears her acting isn't good enough.

She told the magazine: 'I can't quite handle the idea of 'Screen Actress in Big West End Hit' and all that. I would prefer to do something smaller.

'Everything scares me. The idea of doing theatre scares me in an exciting way but doing any part always terrifies me...It boils down to a fear of standing there in a wig and a dress and suddenly thinking, 'I feel like an idiot'.

'You must not let your imagination see the absurdity of it and cause your performance to die.'

The full interview is in the September issue of Tatler, on sale Thursday.

Literary role: Keira Knightley plays a Cambridge graduate in the film adaptation of Ian McEwan's novel Atonement but missed out on university in real life