Keira Knightley has revealed she tried to duck out of the premiere for her new movie – because she didn’t want to miss the The Great British Bake Off final.

The glitzy screening of The Imitation Game at the opening night of the London Film Festival coincided with the climax of the cooking contest, which was seen by more than 13 million viewers on BBC One.

Keira explained, during an interview for Saturday’s edition of The Jonathan Ross Show, that she tried to persuade her agent it would be fine to miss the screening to head home early.

A picture of Keira Knightley at The Imitation Game premiere
Keira Knightley would rather have skipped her premiere to see the Bake Off final (Joel Ryan/Invision/Press Association Images)

And when that failed she had to content herself with leaving the party to watch it on catch-up shortly afterwards, taking precautions to avoid a spoiler about the winner.

She said: “There was a real moment where I was like ‘No, but no, you don’t understand’ and I did actually say to my agent ‘Is it alright because I have seen the film twice before and I love the film but can I just walk the red carpet and just go back and watch it?’

“I did actually leave the party a bit early so I could watch it on iPlayer afterwards so that nobody would tell me what happened. I turned off the radio on the way back so I didn’t know.”

Keira Knightley.
(Joel Ryan/AP)

Keira also told how she struggles to understand the appeal of social media, and said her younger co-stars such as Chloe Moretz view her as “a horrendous nanny” over her lack of interest.

She said she dabbled to see what the fuss was about but got “freaked out”.

“I did actually join Twitter for about 12 hours because I tried to be down with the kids and it just creeped me out. I didn’t post anything and I was under a false name and I think because Chloe followed me, suddenly all these people started following me and posting ‘I’m having a cup of tea now’ and I just got completely freaked out.

“I did the same thing with Facebook, I joined that for about an hour and that still tries to follow me.”