Few actors inhabit a character as fully as Anne-Marie Duff, whether it’s Elizabeth I or Lady Macbeth. As the second season of Bad Sisters arrives on our screens, she talks to Eva Wiseman
Anne-Marie Duff was out for a walk on London’s Hampstead Heath, drinking an oat-milk latte (“Because I’m an actress!”) when suddenly she was surrounded by a group of men. They were red-faced runners in Lycra, “very affluent, very sophisticated middle-aged guys, and they stopped me on the path.” She was startled. Yes, she’s famous, having been familiar to British viewers ever since her breakthrough in Paul Abbott’s Shameless 20 years ago, but even so, hers has never been the “stop you for an autograph” kind of fame, more the discerning nod, the briefly clasped “thank you” hands. They wanted to talk to her, they said, “to ask what I thought about a friend of theirs. They were worried.”…
She’s turned down roles in the past that overlapped with her experience with Eddie, stories about Alzheimer’s, as they felt too close, “and for my mum and dad, I thought it might be overwhelming.” She’d consider, maybe, directing something on the subject. But at the moment, “I’m literally like a dog pulling at the lead, I’m so excited to get back on stage again,” in a production of The Little Foxes at the Young Vic. What excites her about theatre? “Because it’s like this now, it’s just like you and me. And there is nothing as thrilling as the moment you change the temperature in the room. As soon as you say ‘I love you’ to someone on stage, the whole room will gasp. How fucking sexy is that? You feel like a rock star. You want to turn around sometimes and go to the audience, ‘I know, right?’”….