Vanessa was born and raised on the West Coast. She began in opera when she was 8 years old, performing one of the Three Spirits in The Magic Flute, directed by her father David Walsh. The acting bug had bitten, and she starred in plays and musicals every year until the end of high school. Her favourite of the bunch was playing Hermione in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
She graduated from the University of Minnesota/BFA Actor Training Program with additional studies at the Guthrie Theatre and the Globe Theatre in London. Afterward, she drove to New York, where she joined the ensemble cast of the 2010 Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival, which performed Troilus and Cressida and The Taming of the Shrew in repertory. She also played Marc Anthony in an abridged version of Julius Caesar that summer as well.
Vanessa moved back to the West Coast to start working in film and TV in 2011. Her credits include: Longlegs, Murdaugh Murders: The Movie, The Irrational, The Flash, Wilderness and Van Helsing.
