Anne-Marie Duff

Anne-Marie Duff, OBE, is an English actress born in London on 8 October 1970. The younger of two children of Irish immigrants, she grew up in Southall, London, where her father, originally from County Meath, worked as a painter and decorator at Fuller's Brewery in Chiswick, and her mother, from County Donegal, worked in a shoe shop. Duff attended Mellow Lane School, where participation in the school choir revealed a strong singing voice and initially pointed her toward a career as a singer. A classical singing teacher redirected her path, suggesting she had the soul of an actor. To overcome shyness, Duff joined a local youth theatre, Young Argosy, connected to the Argosy Players, and quickly developed a commitment to the stage. At nineteen she enrolled at the Drama Centre in London, where her classmates included John Simm, Anastasia Hille, and Paul Bettany.

Following her graduation from the Drama Centre, Duff made her television debut in 1997 in two episodes of the ITV drama Trial & Retribution, playing Cathy Gillingham. She went on to appear in Amongst Women, in Aristocrats as Lady Louisa Lennox, and in the 2003 BBC television film Charles II: The Power and the Passion as Henrietta of England. In 2002 she took on her first major film role as Margaret McGuire in The Magdalene Sisters, which brought her to wider public attention in the United Kingdom. That same year she played Holly in the first series of the sitcom Wild West, alongside Dawn French and Catherine Tate, and also appeared in a minor role in Holby City as Alison McCarthy.

Duff's first significant critical recognition came with her portrayal of Queen Elizabeth I in the 2005 BBC miniseries The Virgin Queen, which also featured Tom Hardy, Emilia Fox, and Sienna Guillory. The performance earned her British Academy Television Award nominations for Best Actress in both 2006 and 2007. She received the BAFTA Cymru Award for Best Actress for her work in the 2007 television film The History of Mr Polly. Her film work expanded during this period to include Notes on a Scandal alongside Judi Dench, the Irish film Garage, The Waiting Room, French Film, and Is Anybody There?, all released around 2008. In 2009 she portrayed Julia Stanley, the mother of John Lennon, in Nowhere Boy, a role that won her the British Independent Film Award for Best Supporting Actress. That same year she appeared in The Last Station, a biopic about Leo Tolstoy's later years, playing his daughter Sasha.

Duff continued to work across film and television in the years that followed. She appeared in the five-part BBC/HBO/VRT serial Parade's End, adapted from Ford Madox Ford's novels, as Edith Duchemin, and in the 2014 film Before I Go to Sleep. In 2015 she played Violet Miller in Suffragette, a working woman who draws Carey Mulligan's character Maud Watts into the fight for women's rights in east London. That same year she starred in the BBC One crime drama From Darkness, which premiered in October 2015. In 2016 she was cast in the BBC animated miniseries of Watership Down, voicing Hyzenthlay; the production, which also featured her former husband James McAvoy, premiered in December 2018. In 2019 she appeared alongside McAvoy again in the BBC One and HBO adaptation of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials. In 2020 she joined the cast of the Netflix series Sex Education as Erin Wiley, the estranged mother of the character Maeve, returning for both the second and third seasons. Also in June 2020, she appeared as Tracy Daszkiewicz in the three-part drama The Salisbury Poisonings, depicting the 2018 Novichok poisoning crisis in Salisbury, England. Duff narrated the BBC Two documentary Hospital in 2017. Her performance as Grace Williams in the series Bad Sisters earned her the BAFTA Award for Best Supporting Actress in 2024.

Duff has maintained an extensive stage career alongside her screen work. She worked with the Royal National Theatre from early in her career, including its 1996 production of Helen Edmundson's adaptation of Tolstoy's War and Peace. Her National Theatre credits also include Collected Stories, King Lear, and the title role in Marianne Elliott's production of George Bernard Shaw's Saint Joan. She appeared in Vassa and Collected Stories in London's West End. In 2011 she played Alma Rattenbury in Terence Rattigan's Cause Célèbre at the Old Vic, directed by Thea Sharrock. Duff received a Laurence Olivier Award nomination in 2000. Her Broadway career includes a 2013 appearance in Macbeth.

In her personal life, Duff married Scottish actor James McAvoy in 2006, and the couple had a son in 2010. They announced their separation in May 2016 and initially continued to share a home in North London to minimize disruption to their son's life. In 2007, Duff was among nine female public figures who participated in the What's it going to take? campaign, which raised awareness of domestic abuse in the United Kingdom. She was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in the 2025 New Year Honours for services to drama.