Sophie Ruttmar Management

Vanessa de Largie

Vanessa was born in Perth, Western Australia.

Being raised on movies from the 40’s & 50’s, Vanessa has always felt she was born in the wrong era.  Her late parents were responsible for educating her with film & music knowledge. 

Vanessa knew from the age of 4 that she wanted to act and her parents enrolled her in The Johnny Young Talent School where she would train in singing, dance & drama for over a decade. 

At 16, Vanessa decided to drop out of school & audition for the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts, unfortunately she was unsuccessful & told to come back when she had a few more years of life experience.  She managed to get work doing photographic modelling, T.V commercials & voiceover work.  

At 22, (2000) she jumped on a Greyhound bus, heading for Melbourne, with no savings to speak of and too proud to call her parents for help, she lived on the streets, until landing a gig at La Mama.  

A few months later her brother died from an overdose & a few months after that her mother was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer.  Between 2000 & 2005, Vanessa divided her attention between caring for her parents in Perth (her father was also ill with cancer) & coming back to Melbourne to work on projects in Film, Theatre, T.V & Radio.  By 2005, Vanessa had lost both her parents & since then has returned to Melbourne building up acting & writing credits.  

In 2007 she won ‘Best Female Actor’ for her lead role in the feature film ‘A Nocturne’ directed by Bill Mousoulis.

In 2008 & 2009 Vanessa accompanied the films ‘A Nocturne’ & ‘Context’ as a guest to major film festivals in Greece, Holland, Ireland, England & Belgium. 

In 2009 she was accepted into the ‘New Actors Workshop’ in New York to study with Director Mike Nichols (Birdcage, Working Girl) where she trained in techniques created by Viola Spolin. 

Vanessa has worked on 7 feature films all up (A Nocturne, The Dark Psychosis, Smut,  Zyco Rock, Australian Rules, Joffa & Horseplay & over 20 short films.  She has a talent for playing characters that require a large emotional range, so far she has been cast as a vampire, vixen, psycho, alcoholic, depressant, prostitute, nurse, newsreader, 50’s siren, homeless person & Marilyn Monroe, just to name a few. 

Vanessa is writing the third draft of her feature film about the death of her brother titled ‘Cheyne’ to be directed by Jason Turley and is looking forward to finding more meaningful work locally & abroad.