SPOTLIGHTVanessa Kirby:
Fast and Furious
The ‘Hobbs & Shaw’ star
on going from period-
drama royalty to summer
action-movie heroine‘I
’M SO NOT an action-
movie type,” Vanessa
Kirby says. “I’m a the-
ater nerd from London! Then
you find yourself hanging on
the edge of a cliff, a helicopter
is spinning around you, and
you think, ‘What the hell is
going on?!’ ”
For an actress whose break-
through came playing Princess
Margaret on The Crown, the
31-year-old Kirby’s corona-
tion as a running, jumping,
ass-kicking heroine in Hobbs
& Shaw — co-starring Dwayne
“The Rock” Johnson and
Jason Statham — may be the
surprise of the summer movie
season. Her turn in Mission:
Impossible — Fallout as a femme
fatale hinted she could handle
herself in a fight, but her role
in this Fast & Furious spinoff
(she plays Statham’s sister,
who works for MI6) suggests
she could also be the female
Bond we deserve. “They gave
me a lot of Parkour and fight
training,” she says. “I loved it!”Growing up in Wimbledon,
Kirby was more likely to be
buried in a book than catching
a blockbuster, claiming she
“preferred Chekhov to action,
really,” before groaning,
“That sounds so pretentious.
What a wanker!” She caught
the theater bug early on,
as an outlet and an escape;
Kirby has talked about being
severely bullied at school and
suffering from giardiasis as a
teen. After years of doing plays
in the U.K., she nabbed the
Crown role. One of the show’s
fans, Tom Cruise, recruited
her for M:I duty; soon, the
self-proclaimed homebody
was dodging explosions and
trading blows with Johnson
and Statham.
“I wanted to make the
Fallout character quite weird,”
Kirby admits. “But with this
one, I wanted 13-year-old girls
to have the experiences that
their brothers have when they
go to action movies.” Which,
she says, means seeing a
female character stand toe-
to-toe with male co-stars. “I
get to fight Dwayne Johnson,”
Kirby says, giggling, “and
I get to win.” DAVID FEARThe Mix
Kirby in London