“The thing that’s helped me most throughout my career is realising that you just need to be OK with any experience that comes up,” Vanessa Kirby tells us. “The more compassionate you are with yourself when you’re not confident, the easier it is to be confident.”
Given her impressive CV, it’s hard to believe that the BAFTA-winning, Academy Award-nominated actress ever suffers from a lack of confidence. Kirby, who had a wide grounding in theatre before she shot to fame as a young Princess Margaret in The Crown, has since gone on to star in projects as diverse as the Mission: Impossible franchise and the harrowing Netflix drama, Pieces of a Woman.
“I don’t think imposter syndrome ever goes, no matter how many movies you’ve done, where you are in your career, or who you are, at any stage,” she says, speaking to Bazaar in the latest episode of our franchise, How I Got Here. “Everyone’s just winging it, really.”
She may now be considered one of the most talented actresses of her generation, but Kirby’s career started far from the theatre. “My first job was in a bakery in the tiny village I lived in,” she says, laughing. “I’d get up at 3am on a Saturday, and usually we’d go to the pub on a Friday night, so I’d get maybe one hour of sleep. At Christmas, I’d be stamping mince pies in the basem*nt for hours and hours. But I made a lot of friends, who’d come in every day to get their morning cups of tea.”
"I don’t think imposter syndrome ever goes, no matter how many movies you’ve done"
She did, however, develop a love of acting from an early age, watching theatre as a child. “I suddenly realised the power of being able to be transported to a different place,” she says. “I thought, if I can be involved in any way with what that is, I’d be so happy.”
Kirby went on to turn down a place at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art in 2009, to star in three plays at the Octagon Theatre in Bolton. “I remember walking from the theatre to my little flat at the end of the week and opening my first payslip,” she recalls. “I looked at it, thinking ‘I can’t believe they’re paying me to do this’ – because I’d done it for so many hours for free. For a second, I thought, 'maybe I can say I’m a professional actress'. That was an amazing moment.”
Since then, Kirby has more than lived up to that job title, appearing both on stage and screen in big-name productions, from A Streetcar Named Desire at the Young Vic and Uncle Vanya at the Almeida Theatre, to adventure drama Everest and Richard Curtis’s much-loved film, About Time. It would seem that Kirby was born to be an actress – but did she ever have doubts?
“Yes, loads!” she says, immediately. “The industry is so transient, you can be working all year round or have massive breaks, and most of the career is getting lots of ‘no’s. Fear and doubt is always going to be there, no matter what. I’ve gone through different phases, but like most actors, I keep returning even if I have moments of real doubt.”
One of those moments was the pandemic, which Kirby describes as “really tough – the whole industry shut down”. Living with her sister Juliet, an assistant director, the pair decided to found a production company, Aluna Entertainment. “Neither of us were able to work, and we were sat at home – we sort of felt like 13-year-olds on summer holiday, with all our friends away,” Kirby laughs.
"For a second, I thought, 'maybe I can now say I’m a professional actress'. That was an amazing moment"
“There have been so few female directors, female-led movies and female protagonists in the past, which means there are lots of spaces and genres in which we haven’t seen real, messy, human women on screen before. That’s a mission of mine with the company – to put women on screen who I feel are like me, rather than invincible.”
For now, she’s balancing Aluna Entertainment with her acting jobs, including her role as Alanna Mitsopolis in Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One (in cinemas now) and as Empress Joséphine in upcoming historical epic, Napoleon. “My sister and I have a slate of films and we’re just really excited to begin,” she says. “But acting is the space that makes me feel happiest and least judged.” Kirby might not describe herself as invincible, but from our perspective, she’s looking very close indeed.
