Vanessa Kirby

Vanessa Kirby was raised in Wimbledon, London, by parents Jane Cooper Kirby, a former Country Living writer, and surgeon Roger Kirby, a past Royal Society of Medicine president. She has two siblings: Joe, a teacher, and Juliet, a theatrical agent. After attending Lady Eleanor Holles School and a gap year in South Africa, Vanessa studied English at the University of Exeter. Rejected by LAMDA, she traveled and enriched her global perspective. She began her professional acting career on stage in 2010 at the Octagon Theatre Bolton with standout roles in All My Sons, Ghosts, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, winning Best Newcomer at the Manchester Evening News Theatre Awards. She appeared in productions at the West Yorkshire Playhouse, Royal Court, National Theatre, and Almeida, earning rave reviews and awards for performances in As You Like It, Women Beware Women, The Acid Test, Three Sisters, Edward II, and A Streetcar Named Desire. Her screen debut came with About Time, followed by Everest, Jupiter Ascending, and television roles in The Crown (where she earned a BAFTA for playing Princess Margaret), Genius, Westworld, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, and Pieces of a Woman, which earned her the 2020 Venice Best Actress Volpi Cup and an Academy Award nomination. In 2023, she joined Mission: Impossible sequels and was cast as Susan Storm for The Fantastic Four. In 2024, she’ll star in Netflix’s The Night Always Comes.