Anne-Marie Duff

Anne-Marie Duff (born 8 October 1970) is an English actress and narrator. After graduating from Drama Centre London, Duff made television appearances in Trial & Retribution, Amongst Women and Aristocrats in the late 1990s. She made her breakthrough as Fiona Gallagher on the Channel 4 drama series Shameless and as Queen Elizabeth I in The Virgin Queen; both earned her BAFTA nominations for Best Actress. She was awarded the BAFTA Cymru Award for Best Actress for her work in the 2007 television film The History of Mr Polly. Further television roles include Claire Church in From Darkness (2015), Ma Costa in the BBC and HBO series His Dark Materials (2019), Erin Wiley in Sex Education (2020–2021), Tracy Daszkiewicz in The Salisbury Poisonings (2020) and Grace Williams in Apple TV+ series Bad Sisters (2022–present); earning her a British Academy Television Award for Best Supporting Actress for the latter. In film, Duff has had roles in Enigma (2001), The Magdalene Sisters (2002), Notes on a Scandal (2006), French Film (2008), The Last Station (2009) and Nowhere Boy (2009), alongside Shameless co-star David Threlfall; the latter earned her a nomination for the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role. She later appeared in Before I Go to Sleep (2014) and Suffragette (2015). Early life and education Duff was born in London on 8 October 1970, the youngest of two children of Irish immigrants: her father, a painter and decorator at Fuller's Brewery in Chiswick, was from County Meath and her mother was from County Donegal and worked in a shoe shop. The family lived in Southall, London, and Duff attended Mellow Lane School. While at school, she joined the school choir, where she discovered she could 'really sing'. She paid for singing lessons with a woman who taught classical singing, who made a huge impact. Duff initially thought about pursuing a career as a singer and talked about it in great depth with her teacher, who looked at her and said, 'I think you have the soul of an actor.' At an early age, Duff attended a local youth theatre, Young Argosy, linked to the Argosy Players, in order to battle her shy nature; she soon became hooked on the stage. After further study of Film and Theatre, at the age of 19, she attended the Drama Centre in London, alongside John Simm, Anastasia Hille and her good friend Paul Bettany.