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Actor

Ireland · Female

3 series in the catalog

Vanessa Emme is an Irish stage and television actress. Her television roles include Layla Walsh in British police drama The Chelsea Detective (2023–present).

Early and personal life

Emme is of Filipino descent through her mother, who graduated from university in the Philippines before moving abroad to teach. Emme told The Irish Examiner in 2018 that she is distantly related to Filipina freedom fighter Marcela Marcelo who led a group of revolutionaries against the Spanish.

Emme graduated from The Lir Academy in 2014 with a Bachelor in Acting. She moved from Ireland to be based in London in the late 2010s.

Stage

In 2015, she appeared on stage in an adaptation of Brian Friel's Dancing at Lughnasa at the Gaiety Theatre, Dublin.

In 2017, she appeared in Mosquitoes at the National Theatre in London alongside Olivia Colman and Olivia Williams.

In 2018, she appeared in an adaptation of John Osbourne's Look Back in Anger at the Gate Theatre in Dublin.

Film and television

She appeared in Dublin Murders and Bloodlands. She also appeared in A Discovery of Witches in 2022, as well as a role in long-running British procedural crime series Midsomer Murders.

She has a voice role in the animated film A Greyhound of a Girl adapted from the book by Irish author Roddy Doyle.

She has a lead role alongside Adrian Scarborough in series two thru four of The Chelsea Detective as no-nonsense police detective Layla Walsh from 2023, broadcast on Acorn TV. In March 2025, it was confirmed that her character would be returning for the third season of the show with filming completed ahead of an April 2025 broadcast.