by The future looks incredibly bright for Vanessa Kirby.
She’s just landed what’s arguably her most high-profile gig to date – stepping into the role of Susan Storm in the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Fantastic Four. It’s the result of years of graft and growing momentum, which arguably kicked off when she took on the part of a young Princess Margaret in The Crown. Since then, she’s ticked off big-budget blockbusters, period dramas, acclaimed stage turns, and even bagged an Oscar nomination back in 2021.
Prior to playing the Queen’s troubled sister, Kirby could be found in a number of somewhat less glamorous positions. One of her earliest major performances can be found in Richard Curtis’ godawful non-rom non-com About Time, in which she plays a character that can best be described as ‘half-note’. She had a minor role in a BBC adaptation of Great Expectations and several other TV shows that failed that set the world on fire. Her journey to The Avengers has been long and thankless.
Like any actor climbing the ranks, Kirby had to audition for a lot of her early roles. As anyone who has ever attended an audition will know, they can be extremely awkward, especially due to the power imbalance between those on either side of the desk. In an interview with Backstage on the subject of nightmare auditions, Kirby revealed that her attempt to land a part on an unnamed HBO show was thwarted by a combination of jetlag-induced nerves and a poorly placed water bottle.
“I was doing this big speech about my husband who just returned from Vietnam and how emotional it was for me,” she recalled. “As I was doing the speech, I could feel the water dripping down my leg into a pool of water on the floor. If I had been less nervous I’d have been like, ‘Guys, I’m really sorry, this is really embarrassing. I need to stop. There’s a bottle of water that’s spilling all down my legs and it looks like I’ve wet myself.’ I couldn’t because I was so nervous, so I kept going, and it was such a sorry state of affairs. It was just a complete mess. Safe to say I left the audition room and there were a few uncomfortable coughs.”
This is far from the only mishap to beset Kirby’s career. She almost didn’t get her role in The Crown because of some badly applied fake tan, which nearly ruined a screen test. Even when she’s actually cast in something, that’s not a guarantee that things will go well. The 2024 film Eden, which Kirby made with Ron Howard, almost got shut down due to the local wildlife. This poor woman just can’t catch a break.
The best actors are the ones who learn from their failures. Channing Tatum got some life-changing advice as he fluffed his own Marvel audition, which he said improved his career immeasurably. Crucially, however, he didn’t look like he’d peed his pants in front of a room full of people.
Auditions are absolutely no fun, no matter how famous you are. Kirby must have been absolutely thrilled when she got the role of ‘The Invisible Woman’ without having to do one. She was free to drink her water in peace.
