Vanessa Kirby: "What I want to see is raw, fierce, vulnerable women" (2024)

Vanessa Kirby is the sort of actress who likes to plunge herself so completely into her characters that she begins to think like them, to feel like them.

"That’s the job, to force yourself to believe," she says. This immersion has enabled her to inhabit the psyches of some truly fascinating women, from arms-dealers to empresses, grieving mothers to rebel princesses. "I like stories about women who are really open, messy and contradictory."

We are sitting in a nook in Notting Hill’s Electric House members’ club, the one quiet spot amid the breakfast bustle. Kirby, who is known to her friends and family as Noo, is dressed all in black, her Matrix-lite attire – long black coat, sunglasses – contrasting with her bright aquamarine eyes and peroxide hair. The time and location of the interview have changed so many times that I am relieved we are both in the same place at the same time. But this was not because Kirby is difficult or mercurial – in person, she is friendly, relaxed and engaged, with a mischievous smile – but rather because she is currently trying to manage two full-time jobs. As well as being an actress with a full-spectrum range that goes from all-action Hollywood blockbusters, such as Tom Cruise’s Mission: Impossible series, to intense arthouse chamber pieces like Pieces of a Woman and her Bafta-winning depiction of Princess Margaret in the first two seasons of The Crown, she is the co-founder of a new production company, Aluna Entertainment, that is dedicated to making films about the contradictory, powerful women she loves so much. "We have 14 things in development, all with different teams, lots of fantastic filmmakers – really cool, radical stuff. It is so fulfilling," she says.

Kirby turned 35 last month, and has been working, pretty much non-stop, since she was 22. She’s the middle of three siblings (older brother, younger sister) and grew up in Wimbledon, her mother the editor of Country Living magazine, her father a celebrated surgeon specialising in prostate cancer. "My parents both lost parents really young. They both lived through having to survive on their own, and that was really unifying for them," she says. "My mum ended up in Paris by herself, with only enough money for one baked potato a day. She would mix water and Marmite and that was the sauce. So, they had this incredible thing where they were like, you can do anything." This can-do optimism was crucial for Kirby, who was not a confident child and was badly bullied at school. "I was very sensitive. I had no idea how I would become an actress, but I knew it was what I wanted to do; it was what made me feel happiest, it was what made me feel most free, least judged somehow."

At 17, she applied to Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, but was turned down because, they told her, she was too young. So Kirby set off on a gap year, solo, to Africa, horse-riding along the coast, taking a course in conflict resolution in Cape Town and returning to pursue an English degree at Exeter University, where she acted in student-drama productions, found a gang of friends who remain her bedrock and got a first. Afterwards, she was offered a place at Lamda, but decided to do six months’ repertory at the Octagon Theatre in Bolton instead. "It was such a formative, important time," she says. That training, followed by nearly a decade’s experience as a stage actress, during which she won multiple accolades (notably for her performances as Stella in the National Theatre’s A Streetcar Named Desire), has helped her to shine in very varied films. "People say that my career feels random or eclectic, but different playwrights are like different genres. Shakespeare is so different to Ibsen. Arthur Miller requires a wholly other reality again, one that you have to imagine even more in theatre than you do on a film set," she reflects. "As a result, I think much more about the journey of the person than the genre. The method is always the same, whatever the project –explore the psyche."

This was how she approached the role of Alanna Mitsopolis, aka the White Widow, a nepo-baby whose family business is the buying and selling of weapons (she is the daughter of Vanessa Redgrave’s character, Max). She first appeared in Mission: Impossible – Fallout in 2018, wearing a white silk gown with a dagger in her thigh holster; and now the White Widow is about to be deployed again, in Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One. "She comes from an underground crime family, so I wanted to know, how did they get into arms? I did all sorts of research," she says. "And [the director] Christopher McQuarrie gave me loads of books on power and how to transmit power, how calm is the thing that is most powerful – the more you reel it in, the more intimidating it is."

Part of the appeal of the project was the chance to work with Tom Cruise. "He is the most passionate actor," she says. "He knows more about cinema, cares more about it, than anyone I have ever met. He also believes anything is possible, and that really inspires everyone around him to believe in what their own mission is."

Kirby has talked in the past about how fearful she has often felt, suffering from stage fright on a film set just as much as when she is standing in the wings. "I had so much self-doubt growing up – oh my goodness, I still do. I have made peace with the fact that it is there. It’s the practice of letting it be in the passenger seat. You have to say, 'You are not going to drive but you can be here'."

The experience of working with Cruise, with his boundless belief, gave Kirby the confidence she needed to tackle the role of Martha in Pieces of a Woman, about a mother of a stillborn child who enters a fugue-like state of sadness. The film is intimate and devastating, a study in the multiple ways that people who love each other fail to communicate. It was Kirby’s first silver-screen lead and opens with a half-hour, single-shot scene of her in labour. To prepare, she watched a woman go through a birth that lasted six hours, involving forceps, pain and courage. She found this transformative, both personally and professionally, and in 2021 she was nominated for an Oscar for the performance. But before there was any award-season buzz, Kirby made another film, The World to Come, about masculine violence, suppression and desire in 19th-century America. "They were both such female stories, and I literally went from one to the other in a couple of days. Having that experience, how it felt, to take that space, to carry those stories, to explore them. I’ve never been happier on set."

Two weeks after The World to Come wrapped, Covid hit, and Kirby found herself at home, in the Tooting flat she shared with her sister, who also works in film. "And we thought, right, let’s try to watch all of cinema history. But by doing this, I realised what was missing, what I wanted films to be. I was thinking, these are all such brilliant films, but they mostly have a male protagonist. So I started searching for stories. I became obsessive about it, and then I began to find all this material." In this way, Aluna was born, with Kirby’s sister and a former Film4 executive, Lauren Dark.

There is a fertile interplay between Kirby’s careers. Her other big release this year is the Ridley Scott-directed film Napoleon, starring Joaquin Phoenix opposite Kirby’s Empress Josephine. "I got so into her, I read all the books," she says. "I went to her house and to her tomb. You go to Napoleon’s tomb and it is literally huge, like beyond, and hers is tiny, in the corner of a church, way outside of Paris. This woman had the most extraordinary life. You could do 10 hours on her, but he was the one who fought all the battles. So, I was coming back to the [Aluna] office, talking about Josephine, and Lauren was like, we need someone like that. And so we found this brilliant woman who was so relatable and had the most extraordinary life, and we are just developing that now. Sadly, I can’t tell you anything more about it just yet."

Strong women who push at social boundaries appeal to Kirby – like Princess Margaret, who, she says, remains her favourite role. "She’s so much cooler than me, and that was really fun," she says. "To play someone who was so Technicolor, so potent." Kirby discovered a similarly strong female leader when she was made the face of Cartier’s Panthère fragrance. "I learnt that there was this incredible designer at Cartier in 1913, Jeanne Toussaint," she says. "She was the one who first developed the idea of the panther. I just thought for a woman at that time, to be a head designer and to not choose a sweet little flower, but to choose a panther – wild, ferocious, independent... I felt so honoured when they asked me to do this campaign, because for Aluna, that is what I want to see – raw, fierce, vulnerable women, like the women I know and I identify with. I want them to be like the woman I saw give birth, that f*cking warrior."

Kirby says she would like a family of her own one day, but for the time being it is her friends who are having babies. "I am so obsessed with everyone’s birthing stories after doing Pieces of a Woman," she admits. "With my best friend, Anna, when she told me she was pregnant, I would be like, 'So basically you are on month four, so now...' Who am I to start giving people advice about it? I have never bloody done it!"

She has just moved into her own place in Hackney, after years of flat-sharing – although she has still made sure to be close to her friends and family. "I just thought, if I’m going to live by myself, I need to be five minutes’ walk from everyone. I love a big community, everyone over all the time, cooking not very well, always the same thing, usually a lasagne. It is so normalising in every single way." It’s how she copes with the intensity of filming, the psychic rigours of inhabiting other personalities. "It’s about trying to develop a process where you can separate the two, and for me that means spending as much time and space with your friends, doing lovely, normal things, because then you can quickly acclimatise," she explains. I ask if she’s had therapy too, and she smiles and nods. "It’s everything, really," she says. "As an actor, you play so many different parts, and different parts of yourself, so to know what my centre is, no matter what, has been so amazing for the work. Because then you know where you are returning to."

It’s time for Kirby to go to her next meeting, her schedule jam-packed as ever. But before she leaves, she gives me a proper, strong hug. She is such a compelling combination of femininity and power, in herself and in the characters she brings to screen, that it’s genuinely thrilling to imagine what she will do next.

‘Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One’ from Paramount Pictures and Skydance will be released in UK cinemas on 14 July. Apple Original Films’ ‘Napoleon’ will be released in November.

Vanessa was photographed on location at the Four Seasons Hotel London at Ten Trinity Square.