Elizabeth Debicki makes reserve expressive through posture, movement and stillness. We value the feeling she finds in restrained characters, though MaXXXine is a reminder that precision cannot make up for a part barely written.
Fi1m perspective
Elizabeth Debicki can make a still figure seem troubled. She pays close attention to posture and movement, finding signs of private sadness in characters who keep themselves composed. That physical control draws on her dance training. Her breakthrough came as Jordan Baker in The Great Gatsby (2013); by The Night Manager (2016), she was developing a minor character into someone who warranted much closer attention.
Susanne Bier makes persuasive entertainment from familiar spy machinery in The Night Manager. Debicki gives Jed Marshall enough depth and feeling to make a potentially slight part matter. We recommended the programme chiefly for the pleasure of Tom Hiddleston and Hugh Laurie sizing each other up, and its moral complications remain disappointingly slight. Debicki cannot fix that, but the private sadness she brings to Jed is another reason to stay.
Kat in Christopher Nolan's Tenet (2020) continued that restrained, enigmatic casting. Playing Princess Diana across The Crown (2022–2023) involved extensive research into movement, voice and historical detail, taking her concern with physical accuracy into the portrayal of a real person. These are understandable uses of an actor so attentive to how a character carries herself. We would still welcome more parts that allow her to be less guarded.
MaXXXine (2024) does at least let her be more assertive as Elizabeth Bender, the director who casts Mia Goth's Maxine in a horror sequel. We were frustrated by the way Ti West gives Bender two speeches about making respectable work from cheap material, then largely puts her aside. This is a thin film, and Debicki is not given enough to change that. There ought to be something for her to play in Bender's ambitions, but those speeches mostly explain what the film itself hopes to achieve. Start with The Night Manager, where she has room to develop a person.
Biography
Elizabeth Debicki is an Australian actress. Born in Paris in 1990, she was raised in Melbourne and 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 appeared as Jordan Baker in The Great Gatsby (2013). Her film roles include Ayesha in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (2017) and Vol. 3 (2023), Kat in Tenet (2020), and Elizabeth Bender in MaXXXine (2024). On television she played Jed Marshall in The Night Manager (2016) and Princess Diana in The Crown (2022–2023), for which she received a Primetime Emmy Award.
