The Crown star Vanessa Kirby seems to be everywhere these days. With her Marvel debut in just a few months, many would agree her career is on a constant high. However, her Hollywood dreams almost never came to fruition due to a devastating reason. While her terrible health condition played a huge part in it, another tragedy had given her terrible self-image issues. Kirby has spoken on the matter in various interviews throughout her career. Interestingly, although those events had clearly left their impact on her, she admitted that it has also made her more empathetic. Regardless, she has come a long way from those days, and her fans couldn’t be happier about it.
As stated above, Vanessa Kirby’s career has been on a constant rise these past few years, obviously for good reason. However, not many actors can boast of starring in Hollywood’s biggest franchises at just 36 years of age. From Fast & Furious to Mission Impossible – Fallout and now Marvel, Kirby has made her mark everywhere. However, things hadn’t always been as rosy for her. Although the Napoleon actress has stated that she had a nice childhood, she faced her fair share of trouble in those tender years.
Kirby admitted to The Guardian in a 2018 interview that she had troubles with an intestinal parasitic infection called Giardia when she was little. However, it went undiagnosed for the longest time, leading to an almost non-existent appetite and nausea becoming her all-time companion. “All these nightmare injections, pills up the bum, all of it. Prodded around from age nine to 11,” she recalled, bringing to light the severe impact on her early life.
As if that wasn’t enough, she also faced severe bullying in school. What made things worse was that it was systematic, and in fact, teachers knew about it and chose not to intervene. “A teacher said to my mum on my very last day of school: ‘She survived it. She’s done it,’ which means they knew it was happening.” She also reflected on the topic in another interview with Marie Claire UK, noting that those experiences were “one of my darkest times.” Although it had taken a long time for her to make peace with that, she still hasn’t been able to get to the root of it. As such, it had left a huge imprint on her. However, she noted that those events might have also elevated her emotional intelligence. “Now when I look back on it, I feel like those three years gave me a kind of empathy or emotional understanding,” she shared.
Interestingly, during those terrible years, she found solace in drama. Vanessa Kirby has stated many times how early her passion for acting evolved. It seems like her happy place in that nightmarish phase became her true calling in life. It has definitely pushed her to become one of the biggest stars in Hollywood of current times. As childhood dreams go, establishing a career in Hollywood is probably akin to reaching for the moon; for Vanessa Kirby, though, her dreams came true.
She stated in the Marie Claire UK interview that acting became her best friend when she couldn’t rely on anybody else. “I found an acceptance in acting that I couldn’t find anywhere else; it made me feel alive when I was a kid.” As a result, her journey to turn her passion into her profession began. However, it was anything but easy. According to the actor, she wanted to enroll in drama school after high school but unfortunately wasn’t accepted. At the time, she chose to pursue an English degree from the University of Exeter and applied for drama school again after graduation.
As per Esquire, she was accepted at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts. However, Vanessa Kirby chose to skip it for a theater career at the Octagon Theater Bolton. Although she had been concerned about making the right choice then, things seemed to have worked out perfectly for her. Now, she is one of the most popular actors in Hollywood with a glorious career that just keeps rising higher and higher. Her Marvel debut as Susan Storm in Fantastic Four: First Steps just added another feather to her cap.
The Fantastic Four: First Steps will hit the theaters on July 25th, 2025, marking yet another significant stepping stone in Vanessa Kirby’s impressive journey. With her resilience and talent, she stands as an inspiring figure, demonstrating that one can overcome dark childhood struggles to shine as a Hollywood star.
