Elizabeth Debicki

Elizabeth Debicki
Debicki in 2016
Born	(1990-08-24) 24 August 1990 Paris, France
Citizenship	Australia
Alma mater	University of Melbourne
Occupation	Actress
Years active	2010–present

Elizabeth Debicki (born 24 August 1990)¹ is an Australian actress. Born in Paris and raised in Melbourne, she trained in dance before studying drama at the University of Melbourne's Victorian College of the Arts. She made her feature film debut in A Few Best Men (2011), and her first major screen role came as Jordan Baker in Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby (2013), for which she won an AACTA Award. During the same period, she appeared in the Sydney Theatre Company production of The Maids, winning a Sydney Theatre Award.

Debicki's subsequent work moved between film, television and stage. She appeared in several films in 2015, took larger television roles in The Kettering Incident and The Night Manager, and returned to the London stage in The Red Barn. From 2017, she appeared in international productions including the Marvel Cinematic Universe films Guardians of the Galaxy series, Widows, Tenet and MaXXXine. Profiles and reviews have discussed her physical approach to performance, her restrained screen presence, and the way some of her roles complicate an image shaped by height, elegance and glamour.

From 2022 to 2023, Debicki portrayed Diana, Princess of Wales in the Netflix drama series The Crown. The role drew extensive attention for her use of movement, voice and physical detail, and brought her Golden Globe, Critics' Choice, Screen Actors Guild and Primetime Emmy awards. Her other honours include the Cannes Trophée Chopard, along with nominations for a British Academy Television Award and several AACTA Awards.

Debicki was born on 24 August 1990 in Paris, France,¹ to a Polish father and an Australian mother of Irish descent.²³⁴ Her parents were both ballet dancers.⁵ When Debicki was five, the family moved to Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.⁶⁷ She is the eldest of three children and has a sister and a brother.⁸

Debicki became interested in ballet early in life and trained as a dancer before turning to theatre.⁹ She attended Huntingtower School in eastern Melbourne, where she achieved two perfect study scores in Drama and English and was the school's dux when she graduated in 2007.¹⁰ In 2010, she completed a bachelor's degree in drama at the University of Melbourne's Victorian College of the Arts.²¹¹ In August 2009, while in her second year of training, she received a Richard Pratt Bursary for outstanding acting students.¹²

Debicki made her feature film debut in the 2011 Australian comedy A Few Best Men, appearing in a brief screen role. Her first major screen opportunity came soon afterwards, when director Baz Luhrmann saw her audition reel and flew her to Los Angeles to audition for his film adaptation of The Great Gatsby. She auditioned with Leonardo DiCaprio and Tobey Maguire, and in May 2011 Luhrmann announced that she had been cast as Jordan Baker in The Great Gatsby (2013).¹³¹⁴¹⁵ Her performance won the AACTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role.¹⁶

Debicki returned to stage work in 2013, playing Madame in the Sydney Theatre Company's production of Jean Genet's play The Maids, opposite Cate Blanchett as Claire and Isabelle Huppert as Solange.⁶¹⁷¹⁸ She won the best newcomer award at the Sydney Theatre Awards for her performance.¹⁹ In 2014, the production appeared at the New York City Center.²⁰ She also began taking television roles, guest-starring in the third season of the Australian series Rake.²¹

Debicki's film work expanded in 2015 with roles in Guy Ritchie's The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Justin Kurzel's adaptation of Macbeth, and the biographical adventure film Everest.²²²³²⁴ She returned to the London stage the following year as Mona Sanders in The Red Barn, David Hare's stage adaptation of Georges Simenon's novel La Main. Starring alongside Mark Strong and Hope Davis, she appeared in the production at the National Theatre's Lyttelton Theatre from October 2016 to January 2017.²⁵

Debicki also took larger television roles during this period. She starred in the Australian series The Kettering Incident, an eight-hour production filmed in Tasmania.²⁴ She then joined the cast of the BBC miniseries The Night Manager, adapted from the John le Carré novel of the same name.²⁶

Debicki's international work continued in 2017 with a role in the Marvel Studios film Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, in which she played Ayesha, leader of the Sovereign people. She reprised the role in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (2023).²⁷ The same year, she joined Luc Besson's Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets in a voice-over role and played Eva in Simon Baker's film Breath, for which she received an AACTA Award nomination for Best Actress in a Supporting Role.²⁸²⁹³⁰

In 2018, Debicki worked across streaming, television film and cinema. She played Jensen in The Cloverfield Paradox, the third instalment in the Cloverfield franchise, which was released on Netflix directly after Super Bowl LII.³¹ She also appeared in the HBO film The Tale and played Alice in Steve McQueen's heist film Widows.³² The Los Angeles Times described her as a standout in the film's large ensemble cast, which included Viola Davis and Liam Neeson.³³ Her other credits from the period included portraying Virginia Woolf in Vita & Virginia and voicing Mopsy Rabbit in Peter Rabbit and its 2021 sequel, Peter Rabbit 2: The Runaway.

Debicki next appeared opposite Claes Bang and Mick Jagger in the 2019 thriller The Burnt Orange Heresy.³⁴ In Christopher Nolan's spy film Tenet (2020), she starred as Kat, the estranged wife of Kenneth Branagh's character.³⁵ Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian wrote that she had "the most recognisable human emotions here, shouting, crying and even smiling in a way that no one else quite does", while also comparing the role to her part in The Night Manager.³⁶ Debicki later said that Kat's harsher scenes were needed to show the physical and psychological threats faced by the character.³⁷

Debicki portrayed Diana, Princess of Wales in the final two seasons of the Netflix period drama series The Crown.³⁸ The role required her to portray Diana's later public life and death; Debicki later said she spent about a year researching Diana and worked to adopt her voice and physical mannerisms.³⁹ Her performance in the fifth season earned nominations from the Primetime Emmy,⁴⁰ Golden Globe,⁴¹ and Screen Actors Guild awards.⁴² For the sixth and final season, she won the Golden Globe,⁴³ Critics' Choice,⁴⁴ Screen Actors Guild,⁴⁵ and Primetime Emmy awards.⁴⁶ Her Emmy win made her the first Australian to win Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series.⁴⁷

Her later film credits included MaXXXine (2024), in which she played Elizabeth Bender.⁴⁸ In 2025, Debicki returned to the stage opposite Ewan McGregor in Lila Raicek's My Master Builder, a contemporary adaptation of Henrik Ibsen's play The Master Builder, at Wyndham’s Theatre in the West End.⁴⁹⁵⁰

Debicki has described acting in terms of physical awareness. Having trained in dance before turning to theatre, she told Allure that dance gave her an awareness of the body and that acting felt like a related medium shaped through language.⁵¹ Rebecca Nicholson of The Guardian observed that several of her characters, including Jed Marshall in The Night Manager and Kat in Tenet, are marked by stillness and private sadness.⁵² For The Crown, Debicki studied footage of Diana, Princess of Wales, and worked with a movement coach to find the "emotional logic" behind Diana's posture, gaze and gestures, an approach described as seeking the reasons for movement rather than mere imitation.⁵³⁵⁴

Several reviews and profiles have focused on Debicki's ability to add detail to roles that could otherwise seem decorative or narrowly written. Early reviews noted her presence in ensemble settings. Writing for RogerEbert.com, Matt Zoller Seitz singled out her Jordan Baker among the smaller roles in The Great Gatsby, while reviews of The Maids said she held her own opposite Cate Blanchett and Isabelle Huppert.⁵⁵⁵⁶⁵⁷ Widows drew more detailed attention, with reviewers noting Debicki's use of body language to show the character's movement from fear to self-possession.⁵⁸⁵⁹ Her portrayal of Diana in The Crown drew extensive attention, with reviewers praising the precision of her physical and vocal performance.⁶⁰⁶¹⁶²

Coverage of Debicki has often traced a tension between her visual elegance and roles that complicate it. Vanity Fair linked her height and appearance to costume-driven work, while Vulture later noted her association with glamorous or remote figures before Widows offered her a more ordinary role.⁶³⁶⁴ Sources have variously reported her height as 6 ft 2 in (1.88 m) or 6 ft 3 in (1.91 m), and have discussed it in relation to costume, screen presence and physical performance.⁶³⁶⁵⁶⁶ Debicki has acknowledged being repeatedly cast as sad, affluent women, but has said roles such as Jed and Alice mattered because they let her bring nuance to women who might otherwise be reduced to appearance or function.⁵²⁵⁹ Following The Crown, Vogue described her portrayal of Diana as a catalysing performance, and Debicki said she wanted to follow it with sharply different work, including MaXXXine and a return to theatre.⁶⁶