Vanessa Kirby Says She Had “So Much Compassion” for Empress Josephine (2024)

1988-present

Latest News: Vanessa Kirby Discusses Playing Josephine in the New Napoleon Movie

Academy Award nominee Vanessa Kirby is back on the big screen with the release of Napoleon, Ridley Scott’s epic biopic about the famous French military leader played by Joaquin Phoenix. Kirby portrays Josephine Bonaparte, the first wife of Napoleon who he was married to while steadily rising to power. “Josephine’s story is mind-blowing really,” Kirby said in a video she shared on Instagram before the movie’s theatrical release. “I had so much compassion for her, because it was a brutal time, and he was brutal to be with. Josephine had to this incredible force of nature. I found her the most remarkable, interesting person. She was iconic, and I felt really honored to try and inhabit her.”

Kirby has received praise for her performance so far. Film critic Jake Coyle wrote the actor “rivals Phoenix for most potent presence in Napoleon,” and The Los Angeles Times proclaims “Vanessa Kirby commands the heart of” the movie.

Vanessa Kirby is an acclaimed English actor who received a 2020 Academy Award nomination for her performance as a grieving young mother in Pieces of a Woman. She first garnered widespread attention in 2017 when she was portrayed Princess Margaret in the Netflix series The Crown, which earned her an Emmy Award nomination and won her a BAFTA Award. Kirby has appeared in theater, television, and movies, including supporting roles in the action movie franchises Mission: Impossible and Fast & Furious. Kirby portrays Empress Josephine in Napoleon, the new Ridley Scott–directed biopic featuring Joaquin Phoenix in the title role.

FULL NAME: Vanessa Nuala Kirby
BORN: April 18, 1988
BIRTHPLACE: London, England
ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Aries

Vanessa Nuala Kirby was born on April 18, 1988, in London to Jane and Roger Kirby. Her father is a prominent retired prostate surgeon currently serving as president of the London-based Royal Society of Medicine, and her mother is a former editor of Country Living magazine. Kirby grew up in Wimbledon, London, as the middle child of three siblings. Her family and friends call her “Nu,” a nickname derived from her middle name; Kirby says the name Vanessa is “way too formal and mumsy.”

Kirby began to develop her interest in acting from watching movies with her father at a young age, but she truly decided to become an actor at age 11 after watching Corin and Vanessa Redgrave in a production of The Cherry Orchard at the National Theatre in London. Although she described her childhood as a happy one, Kirby was bullied in primary school and said she “became self-conscious about everything I did” but found an escape in drama and local theater. As a child she also suffered from giardia, an intestinal parasite that often made her nauseated.

After attending the Lady Eleanor Holles school in southwest London, Kirby applied for the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School but was rejected, partially because she was too young. She took a year off to travel, then attended the University of Exeter, where she obtained an English degree and appeared in school plays.

Before her TV and movie career began, Kirby made an appearance in the music video for British pop band McFly’s 2007 song “The Heart Never Lies,” which reached No. 3 on the U.K. chart. Kirby considered using a version of “Nu” as a stage name when she embarked on her professional career but decided to stick with Vanessa after her agent said she reminded her of Vanessa Redgrave.

Kirby was offered and initially accepted a place at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art but turned it down after meeting theater director David Thacker through her agent. This led to Kirby’s theater debut in leading roles at the Octagon theatre in Bolton, Manchester, including productions of All My Sons by Arthur Miller, Ghosts by Henrik Ibsen, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare. Kirby said of her audition at the Octagon: “I flopped into the audition all sweaty, a total nobody who’d been taken on by an agent by chance.” Her days of anonymity were numbered, however, as Kirby won the BIZA Rising Star Award at the Manchester Evening News Theatre Awards in 2009.

Over the next two years, Kirby appeared in Marianne Elliott’s production of Women Beware Women at the National Theatre and starred as Rosalind in Shakespeare’s As You Like It at the West Yorkshire Playhouse in Leeds. “For those things to happen in succession made me feel like less of a fraud,” Kirby later told The Scotsman.

While continuing to appear in theatrical productions, Kirby made her television debut in 2011 in The Hour, a BBC drama series starring Dominic West and Romola Garai. That same year, Kirby portrayed Estella Havisham in the BBC’s 2011 television adaptation of Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations. Her character was the adopted daughter of Miss Havisham, who was played by Gillian Anderson.

In 2012, Kirby appeared in a National Theatre production of Benedict Andrews’ Three Sisters. She also acted in one of her early movie roles in the British crime film The Rise. She portrayed Queen Isabella in a 2013 National Theatre production of Christopher Marlowe’s play Edward II and, the next year, appeared alongside Anderson again in a production of Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire that ran on both Broadway and London’s West End. One night during the play’s run, she got stuck in a revolving stage while carrying a birthday cake intended for Anderson’s character.

Kirby appeared in several movies in the 2010s, such as Queen & Country (2014), Jupiter Ascending (2015), and Kill Command (2016). However, she first earned widespread attention in 2016, when she played a young Princess Margaret, the sister of Queen Elizabeth II (portrayed by Claire Foy) in the Netflix drama series The Crown. She called filming the show “the best time of my life.” Rather than portray Princess Margaret simply as a younger version of her adult persona, Kirby sought to “find the person she was before she hardened, before she became bitter and self-loathing.”

Kirby was nominated for an Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series in 2018 for her portrayal and received two BAFTA Award nominations for Best Supporting Actress, winning the award in 2018. The cast of The Crown changes every two seasons as it depicts Queen Elizabeth and others at different stages of their lives, so the Princess Margaret role was turned over to Helena Bonham Carter in Season 3. “Saying goodbye to [the role] was awful, I really grieved it, actually,” Kirby said.

Kirby joined one of Hollywood’s most popular film franchises when she was cast as Alanna Mitsopolis, also known as the White Widow, in Mission: Impossible–Fallout (2018). Her character is a well-known philanthropist who secretly engages in illegal arms dealing and money laundering. “I would never have thought of it myself to be somebody that sort of so in charge of this really dark, you know, hugely powerful organization, but to do it with lightness and play, rather than being assertive or menacing,” Kirby said. She performed many of her own stunts for the part and described the movie’s star Tom Cruise as “absolutely disciplined [and] super enthusiastic,” adding that he “always wants everything executed at a super-high level, so you have to train really hard.”

During this time, Kirby continued appearing in theatrical productions. In 2018, Kirby portrayed the title role in the National Theatre production of Julie, playwright Polly Stenham’s adaptation of August Strindberg’s Miss Julie.

In 2019, she joined yet another popular action movie franchise when she was cast in Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw. She played Hattie Shaw, an MI6 agent and the younger sister of protagonist Deckard Shaw, played by Jason Statham. The role involved a great deal of fighting, and Kirby once again performed many of her own stunts, saying she was “constantly in pain.” She said she was drawn to the character’s strength, noting: “I felt like it was so important as the lead female that she wasn’t falling into any tropes. Like she’s never got saved by the guys, she was a capable fighter, and she never got rescued.”

Kirby received widespread critical praise for her appearance in Pieces of a Woman (2020), a drama directed by Kornél Mundruczó. Her character was a young woman mourning her baby’s death immediately after birth. Kirby called the movie “almost a character study on grief [and] how this person reacts to this kind of trauma, because of the generations of trauma and unresolved grief that’s been passed down.” Ty Burr of The Boston Globe wrote, “Kirby’s performance is multilayered, with sorrow buried far down beneath strata of denial, stoicism, coping, fury.” Los Angeles Times critic Justin Chang wrote, “Kirby’s authority is commanding, even unassailable.”

Kirby won the Volpi Cup for Best Actress at the Venice Film Festival for the performance and went on to receive many more nominations, including for a Golden Globe, BAFTA Award, Screen Actors Guild Award, and an Academy Award. It was her first Oscar nomination for Best Actress, though she ultimately lost to Frances McDormand in Nomadland (2020).

The release of Pieces of a Woman was partially marred as Kirby’s co-star Shia LaBeouf faced allegations of sexual battery, assault, and infliction of emotional abuse. In a statement, Kirby said of the controversy: “I stand with all survivors of abuse and respect the courage of anyone who speaks their truth. Regarding the recent news, I can’t comment on an ongoing legal case.”

Kirby has continued appearing in movies, including dramas like The World to Come (2020), Italian Studies (2021), and The Son (2022) with Hugh Jackman and Laura Dern.

She also reprised her role as the White Widow in Mission: Impossible—Dead Reckoning, Part One. “I love coming back to Mission: Impossible because it really is like a family,” she said. “It has such a history to it, and I’ve found the White Widow a very complex and unusual character to play.” Kirby will return for the next film in the installment, Mission: Impossible—Dead Reckoning, Part Two, which is scheduled for release on May 23, 2025.

Most recently, Kirby portrayed Empress Josephine in Napoleon, the new Ridley Scott–directed biopic that stars Joaquin Phoenix as the infamous French military commander Napoleon Bonaparte. The movie released in theaters on November 22, 2023. Jodie Comer was originally cast as Josephine, the wife of Napoleon, but Kirby took over the role after Comer dropped out due to scheduling conflicts. Kirby and Phoenix agreed to surprise each other and go to dark places during filming so that their performances would avoid the usual clichés of period dramas. This led to an unscripted moment in which Phoenix slapped Kirby during a divorce scene, a decision that drew considerable media attention.

Kirby is not married, though she has reportedly dated several fellow actors over the years, including Callum Turner, Douglas Booth, and Paul Rabil.

• I never thought that stunts and action would be my genre, but I’m understanding now that you can transcend genre, as long as you try and find the real woman behind the part.
• We women have got to be the generators of the material, and in order to do that, we have to understand the system we’re in, which I’m really trying to do.
• I don’t want to be shot through a lens of sexualization. That’s not me. That’s the distorted feminine and the distorted masculine that is creating so much of the toxic energy in our society.
• So many times you pick up a script and you think, “OK, so she’s the sexy one,” or, “She’s the ex-girlfriend.”… When I was auditioning for drama school and looking for a monologue, it was all, “I’m whining about my period or my baby that has died or my boyfriend…” Why can’t you have a normal girl, talking about ideas?

Fact Check: We strive for accuracy and fairness. If you see something that doesn’t look right, contact us!