Keira Knightley’s husband of 13 years has been pictured without his wedding ring.
James Righton, former singer of pop band Klaxons, was spotted without the gold band he’s worn since the couple married in 2013.
Wearing a colourful plaid jacket and a baseball cap that read ‘I don’t work here’, a grim-faced James, 42, cycled through north London before stopping to chat with a friend.
The couple, who have two daughters – Edie, ten, and Delilah, six – were pictured together as recently as April 3 wearing their wedding rings and it was not know why Righton was not wearing his while cycling.
In February, Keira, 41 – known for her roles in the films Love Actually and Atonement – caused raised eyebrows stopped using her husband’s surname in official documents.
At Companies House her name now reads Keira Christine Knightley, having previously been Righton.
The changes relate to her performing arts company KCK Boo Ltd, which had more than £11million of assets at the time of its latest accounts.
After speculation about the reason for the change, representatives for the actress said it was done to comply with new identity verification rules which meant it had to align with her ID document name, not her married name.
In 2014 she had talked about adopting her husband’s name, saying: ‘I went to do the passport thing “cos I was thinking, ‘Shall I do it? It will be helpful”.
‘But you actually have to see it written down, and I found I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t go there. Yet.’
Keira changed her name on company documents in 2021. Representatives for the couple have been contacted by Daily Mail.
Last December the actress revealed that she had sold the beloved French vineyard where she married James, admitting it was ‘difficult’ to keep their passion project going.
The couple owned Les Cinq Puits, a vineyard near the slopes of Mont Ventoux in the Rhone Valley.
She and James married there in 2013, two years after they first met at a mutual friend’s dinner party in London.
They held a low-key ceremony attended by family and close friends, including actress Sienna Miller, with the bride wearing a Chanel dress and matching jacket on the day.
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The couple tend to keep their private life underwraps, however Keira has shared a anecdote about the trials and tribulations of a long-term relationship.
She said on the couple’s tenth wedding anniversary, that it was ‘a miracle to have made it this far’.
Meanwhile in more recent candid comments, Keira revealed in a December interview that she issued her husband an ultimatum over his ‘bizarre’ habits in their early days of dating.
Explaining how she had to ‘train him,’ the actress compared the musician to a ‘a child’ when it came to his diet.
Speaking on Waitrose podcast Dish with hosts Nick Grimshaw and Angela Hartnett, she recalled enlisting the help of her friend to try and make James try new foods.
Keira said: ‘He just couldn’t cook, all he ate was cheese on toast. I was like, ‘This is not going to work’.
‘He wouldn’t even go out for dinner. He didn’t understand going to restaurants. He was bizarre.’
Keira explained how she made him try new foods with his eyes shut as she ‘trained’ him.
She continued: ‘My oldest friend is a proper old-school bon viveur, we basically trained him.
We took him out to restaurants and he wouldn’t try anything. He was like a child. He used to shut his eyes, and we’d be like, ‘Try it, try it!”
‘He’d be like ‘OK, it’s nice, it’s nice!”
