When Vanessa Kirby was announced to play Josephine in Ridley Scott’s Napoleon, it caused a ripple of surprise among historians. Kirby is considerably younger than the actor in title role, Joaquin Phoenix (14 years her senior), but in fact, Josephine was six years older than Napoleon.
Scott explained that he cast a younger woman so he would be able to alternate between battle scenes and what he describes as a “really interesting, prolonged love story”. The film portrays Napoleon as someone who, according to Scott: “conquered the world to try to win her [Josephine’s] love, and when he couldn’t, he conquered it to destroy her, and destroyed himself in the process”.
