Vanessa Kirby feared she was "finished" after shooting in 'The Crown'.
Vanessa Kirby thought The Crown could end her career
The 35-year-old star was a successful stage actress but had struggled to make the transition onto TV or film before landing the role of Princess Margaret in the first two seasons of Netflix's regal drama, and though she won a BAFTA Award for her work on the show, she recalled thinking her character seemed so over-the-top in contrast to Claire Foy's Queen Elizabeth, it could end her career.
She told The Times newspaper: “Claire is the master of subtlety and I’d be sitting across from her in those scenes with tears coming out, smoking cigarettes, my nose running and I’m shouting in her face.
"And I remember thinking, ‘Oh my God. This could be the most pantomime thing I’ve ever done. I’m going to be finished after this.’”
The role launched Vanessa into a string of high-profile movie roles, beginning with 'Mission: Impossible - Fallout, in which she played arms dealer White Widow, a character so successful she returned for the two-part follow-up 'Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning', of which the second installment is due for release in 2025.
She said of the character: “Strange. That’s the biggest compliment you could give me: strange. I just love playing strange; the stranger the better.”
Vanessa can next be seen as Josephine opposite Joaquin Phoenix in Sir Ridley Scott's historical epic 'Napoleon' and she loved the fact the film offered her an opportunity to learn about a time she was previously "ignorant" about.
She said: “That’s the thing, when you sign up to a project you are literally asked to go and learn something about which you were ignorant. And I love that.
"I love coming out of something going, ‘I know so much about this and I feel changed because of it.’ That is the thing that I never want to take for granted.”
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