Keira Knightley plans stage return three months after giving birth

Pregnant actress Keira Knightley plans to go ahead with her Broadway debut just three months after she is due to give birth.

The Pride and Prejudice star is set to take the title role in a stage adaptation of Emile Zola's novel Therese Raquin, about an unhappily married woman who embarks on an affair.

Knightley is due to give birth to her first child with husband James Righton in the summer (15) but insists she will go ahead with the play, which opens at New York's Roundabout Theatre in October (15).

She even hopes her post-birth hormones will help her onstage, telling Britain's Daily Mail newspaper, "There's no change as far as I know. The performance might even be better because after the baby I'll probably be moody and cry a lot and some of that's perfect for the part isn't it?"