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Actress Vanessa Kirby Has a Lot in Common with Princess Margaret

With her new role in the Netflix series The Crown, Vanessa Kirby has moved on to a larger stage.


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Photograph by Laura Coulson, Styled by Camilla Pole, Edited by Sam Milner; Hair by Ben Cooke for Lockonego Salon at Frank Agency; Makeup by Valeria Ferreira for Dior at Caren

Vanessa Kirby, 28, was all set to play a civilian in the sweeping Netflix series The Crown, a biopic about Queen Elizabeth II, when she had a premonition, supported by a healthy dose of bravado. “I was walking down the street and it just dawned on me: I think I might be Princess Margaret,” the British actress recalls. “She’s the playful one, the fun one, the wild one, but she has this vulnerability and fragility.”

Kirby, as Princess Margaret in The Crown.

Courtesy of Netflix

The screenwriter, Peter Morgan, and the director, Stephen Daldry, agreed. In the first season, as young Margaret, Kirby grapples with her father’s death, her sister’s ascension to the throne, and her forbidden romance with the king’s divorced serviceman, Peter Townsend. During filming, Kirby, who has starred in critically acclaimed stage productions of Chekhov and Shakespeare, and recently appeared as Stella in A Streetcar Named Desire at St. Ann’s Warehouse, in Brooklyn, confirmed that she does, in fact, have plenty in common with the rebellious royal. “I’ve been told that I have no filter,” Kirby says. “As a person, I’m incredibly overfamiliar. I have to be careful what I say!”

Kirby, at age 2.

Courtesy of Kirby

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