Vanessa Kirby, the multifaceted career of the most discreet star

The stages have been the second home of Vanessa Kirby (Wimbledon, 35 years old) since the beginning of her career as an actress.

Theater critics immediately surrendered to the British talent since, in 2010, she starred in four different works, including

Specters,

by Henrik Ibsen,

A Midsummer Night's Dream

, by William Shakespeare, or

They Were All My Children

, by Arthur Miller, a work that earned him the distinction of young promise at the Manchester Evening News Theater Awards (MENTA).

At barely 20 years old, far from being intimidated by the demands and expectations behind this type of works that have become major attractions on the billboard, she grew up and began to chain premiere after premiere.

The intimacy of the theater soon gave way to British television and then to cinema, where she has demonstrated her interpretive malleability.

Nominated for major awards, in 2024 she continues to achieve professional success, but her discretion prevails over her multifaceted career and keeps the actress almost like an unknown.

Without being carried away by the favorable winds that are currently propelling his career, he claims to be very aware of the ups and downs that his profession entails.

“The industry is very transitory, you can work for a whole year or have box office hits, but most of your career is receiving a lot of noes.

Fear and doubt will always be there, no matter what happens,” she stated in the British edition of

Harper's Bazaar

magazine last July.

Fearful or not, the truth is that the foundations of Kirby's career are becoming more and more robust.

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His ability to shine at work seems to run in the family.

The interpreter is the daughter of Roger Kirby, a renowned prostate surgeon, researcher, writer and president until 2024 of the Royal Society of Medicine.

Her mother, Jane Kirby, was editor of

Country Living

magazine for years.

Her brother Joe is a renowned teacher who co-founded the free school Michaela Community School, notable for being one of the schools with the best scores in England in the GCSE tests (national exams taken by students from the age of 14).

But it is her sister Juliet, a theatrical agent, who shares a profession closer to that of the actress.

Despite being born into a more than wealthy family, Kirby's childhood was not a bed of roses.

She herself recounted in an interview with

The Guardian

how theater became her lifeline during the years in which she suffered bullying.

“It was systematic harassment, quite horrible.

On the last day of school, a teacher said to my mother: 'She has survived.

She's got it,' which means they all knew what was happening,” she opened up in 2018.

Life after Netflix

In 2016, after several years of experience in theater,

The Crown arrived

and with it almost instant stardom.

The relative anonymity in which she lived disappeared when she took on the role of Princess Margaret in the first two seasons of the Netflix blockbuster, one of the most successful on the platform.

The impossible story between Queen Elizabeth II's sister and army captain Peter Townsend earned the performer her first Emmy nomination and two Bafta television nominations, an award she took home in 2018. During For a time, he combined the small screen with the theater.

Her passion for the stage gave her enough energy to rehearse Chekhov's play

Uncle Vanya

after the marathon days of filming the series.

That same 2016, Kirby debuted on Broadway with

A Streetcar Named Desire

, a play that she had already performed in London to great acclaim two years earlier.

The Crown

has been, for the moment, his last television project, but not his first.

Like many young British actresses, Kirby has participated in numerous period productions for the small screen, including the miniseries

Great Expectations,

which the BBC broadcast in 2011, or

The Frankenstein Chronicles

, a thriller inspired by the famous novel by Mary Shelley released in 2015.

Still of Vanessa Kirby in the first season of 'The Crown', in which she plays Princess Margaret.©Netflix/Courtesy Everett Collection (©Netflix/Courtesy Everett Collection / Cordon Press)

Her career in cinema underlines the versatile character of an actress who has proven to perform skillfully in all types of genres.

Whether it's a period drama, a sci-fi title or a multi-million dollar action movie.

In recent years, she has been seen in small supporting roles in blockbuster romantic films, such as

A Question of Time

(Richard Curtis, 2013) or

Before You

(Thea Sharrock, 2016);

transformed into Zelda Fitzgerald, in

Genius

(Michael Grandage, 2016);

turned into a cyborg in the science fiction film

Kill Comand

(Steven Gomez, 2016);

or as an arms dealer and Tom Cruise's scourge in

Mission Impossible: Fallout

(Christopher McQuarrie, 2018

).

She and Cruise repeated her in the seventh installment of the

Mission: Impossible franchise: Deadly Sentence, Part 1,

released in 2023

.

In

Variety

he told how the actor's commitment to the film (he shoots all the action scenes without specialists) impacted him: “That way of trusting in cinema, in yourself and in what you are capable of is very inspiring.

He really believes that he can do the impossible and he does it, I love being part of the franchise and I'm happy to be back.”

The second part of the film, scheduled for 2025, will also feature Kirby in the cast again.

There is no impossible challenge

His work on

Mission: Impossible

did not go unnoticed and gave him a new job opportunity with another of the highest-grossing sagas of recent years.

In 2019, he became part of the cast in

Fast & Furious: Hobbs and Shaw

, alongside Dwayne Johnson, Jason Statham, Idris Elba and Eiza Gonzalez.

A role as an M16 spy that would have nothing to do with her next character, the one that ended up establishing her as one of the best actresses of her generation.

In 2020 came

Fragments of a Woman

(directed by Hungarian Kornél Mundruczó and co-produced by Martin Scorsese), an intimate drama where Kirby's character faces the loss of her baby, born at home, and the subsequent negligence trial against the midwife. charge of childbirth.

The actress grew up with this tragic story in which she was able to display her talent for drama, the same one that gave her praise in her theatrical beginnings.

If in

Mission: Impossible

she underwent intense physical training, for the preparation of this film she had “the absolute privilege of seeing someone give birth.

“She was amazed,” she revealed in

Vanity Fair

.

With her heartbreaking performance, she earned nominations for almost all the season's awards, including the Oscar and the Golden Globe. Finally, she won the Volpi Cup for best actress at the Venice Film Festival.

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Even in the middle of the awards campaign, he managed to try to limit his media exposure.

After the success of

Fragments of a Woman,

she starred in several independent films and managed to remain discreet before the intense promotional campaign for

Napoleon

began .

In the

biopic

that Ridley Scott has directed about the French strategist and emperor, Kirby has once again captivated critics with her performance as Josephine Bonaparte.

And she came to the cast as a rebound, after actress Jodie Comer had to reject her role due to scheduling problems.

Accustomed to playing historical figures, she recognizes the extra responsibility hidden behind this type of roles: “You are not inventing a story, their lives, their childhood, their past or their mind.

You have to try to reach out to someone who has really lived, and lived such an extraordinary existence, far removed from any of us or anything I could personally relate to,” she reflected during a chat with

Deadline

.

Vanessa Kirby and Joaquin Phoenix, in a still from 'Napoleon' (2023).©Sony Pictures/Courtesy Everett Collection / Cordon Press

A quiet year for the actress is not on the horizon.

In addition to the new

Mission Impossible

, we will see her side by side with Ana de Armas, Sydney Sweeney and Jude Law in

Eden

, directed by Ron Howard and currently in the filming phase.

Defined by the interpreter as a “ survival

thriller

”, little is known about the plot, except that it will address the life of a group of people who abandon life in society to go to the Galapagos Islands.

On the big screen, her participation in

Fantastic Four

has also just been confirmed , where she will play the invisible woman.

Confirmation is pending on what would be his first television project since

The Crown

.

Ryan Murphy would have been responsible for Kirby returning to the small screen.

Her influential creator could count on her in the new season of

Feud

, the series that delves into the history of rivalry of different famous people.

The first season recovered the notorious feud between actresses Joan Fontaine and Bette Davis;

the second focuses on the confrontation between the writer Truman Capote and his high society friends, known as the swans;

and the third installment will address the notorious divorce between the extravagant Jocelyn Wildenstein and her husband, the businessman and art dealer Alec Wildenstein, the most expensive in history until the separation from Jeff Bezos.

Beyond acting, the actress co-founded her own production company, Aluna Entertainment, with her sister Juliet in 2021.

The objective?

Bet on women's stories, told by women but far from archetypes: “What would be the female equivalent of

Taxi Driver

?

I think what is radical is to create stories of disastrous and contradictory anti-heroines who are not saviors or worthy just because they are women,” she explained in

Indie Wire.

In front of or behind the screen, Vanessa Kirby has a lot to say.