British actress Vanessa Kirby

Vanessa Kirby is an up-and-coming actress in British cinema, television, and theater.

She may be best known in America as the colorful and controversial Princess Margaret in "The Crown," about the British royal family, and her performance gained her an award for Best Supporting Actress from the British  Academy Television Awards, the British equivalent of the Emmys .

Ms. Kirby's movie roles include a rebellious sister of a British army draftee in 2014's Queen and Country, and she also appeared in Bone In the Throat, a 2015 crime drama based on a novel by the late chef Anthony Bourdain about a chef who unwittingly gets involved in the East London mob.

Ms. Kirby, like any actress from Britain worth her salt, has done theater, and she's tackled all of the great playwrights.  Her Shakespeare roles include Helena in a 2010 production of A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Octagon Theatre in Manchester and Rosalind in a production of As You Like It that same year at the Leeds Playhouse in West Yorkshire.  At the Young Vic in London, she played Masha in a 2012 production of Chekhov's Three Sisters, and her American stage credits include Stella in a 2016 production of A Streetcar Named Desire at St. Ann's Warehouse in Brooklyn.

Vanessa Kirby is only in her early thirties, and she likely has more credits ahead of her.  Expect a "Beauty of Retrospect" post for her on this blog in the future.

Fun fact: She got the role of Princess Margaret in "The Crown" after a six-month search by the producers.