![]() So she waited, using her smaller parts as opportunities to observe and learn, asking Anthony Hopkins about his craft when they worked together on the British TV drama “The Dresser,” and watching how generous Rachel McAdams was onset for the film “About Time,” she said. “I could never find those roles at all onscreen,” she said. She’s played many complex characters onstage: women like Rosalind, the fiercely intelligent heroine of Shakespeare’s “ As You Like It.” She was holding out for an onscreen lead in whom she could feel some of Rosalind’s “magic,” she said, which made performing “like flying when you step onstage.” Her Margaret fizzes with restless energy, an ideal foil for Claire Foy’s restrained Queen Elizabeth.Įven as these supporting roles brought her critical praise and awards, Kirby wasn’t in a hurry to find her first onscreen lead role, she said. She starred as Princess Margaret in the first two seasons of “ The Crown,” a performance that earned her a BAFTA award. Kirby has been working steadily ever since, with lead roles in the West End, as well as high profile supporting roles in films and British TV costume dramas. Working with Thacker taught her to trust herself, to find her own way as an actor, rather than waiting for other people to tell her what to do, she said. Kirby agreed, and now describes that season as her training. ![]() A few months before term began, though, she was offered three stage roles by David Thacker, a former director-in-residence at the Royal Shakespeare Company, who was then the artistic director of the Octagon Theater in Bolton, a town in northern England.Ĭome to Bolton, he told her, and you will learn more from these roles - which included Helena in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and Ann Deever in “All My Sons” - than you will in three years of drama school. “You didn’t have to be anything, or do anything right.”Īfter graduating from college, where she studied English literature, Kirby was accepted to the prestigious London Academy of Music & Dramatic Art in 2009. “Every time I walked into that space, I suddenly felt not judged at all, I just felt accepted,” Kirby said. “When you are very established, you are more and more careful.” Mundruczo said he needed an actor at Kirby’s exact career point: “Where all of the skills are already there, but the fear is not,” he said. Inspired by the labor she’d observed, she tried to think as little as possible, she said, and not judge what her body was doing in the scene.Īfter a decade of work, “Pieces of a Woman” is Kirby’s first time leading a feature film, and it is a bold and memorable role that shows her flexing her acting muscles. “It was, I think, probably the best career experience I’ve ever had,” Kirby said of those two days of shooting. In the end, each take was different, Kirby said: Martha and Sean’s conversations shifted, the way Martha’s body reacted to the contractions was distinctive each time. In a phone interview, the director, Kornel Mundruczo, who also works in theater and opera, said that preparing it was like getting a stunt scene ready: “Lots of planning, but you don’t know what’s actually going to happen.” Over two days, that long take was shot six times. “Every second of what was happening to her, I just absorbed.” The experience of watching that six-hour labor “changed me so profoundly,” Kirby said. While she was there, a woman arrived having contractions, and agreed to let Kirby observe the birth. ![]() She talked to women who had given birth and women who’d had miscarriages, as well as midwives and obstetrician-gynecologists at a London hospital. “Then I was even more scared, because I realized that I had a responsibility to show birth as it is, not as it’s even edited in documentaries,” Kirby said. A Supporting-Actress Underdog: In “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” don’t discount the pivotal presence of Stephanie Hsu.Sundance and the Oscars : Which films from the festival could follow “CODA” to the 2024 Academy Awards.An Andrea Riseborough FAQ : Confused about the brouhaha surrounding the best actress nominee? We explain why her nod was controversial.The Tom Cruise Factor : Stars were starstruck when the “Top Gun: Maverick” headliner showed up at the Oscar nominees luncheon.Kyle Buchanan is covering the films, personalities and events along the way. The Projectionist Chronicles the Awards Season The Oscars aren’t until March, but the campaigns have begun.
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