Anna Maxwell Martin suffers for her fine art.

The Metro
Published: February 18, 2010
Author: Keith Watson

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I’ve got a face made for suffering,’ sighs Anna Maxwell Martin before letting out a peal of laughter that punctuates her lively conversation. I don’t get offered many comedies.

She’s about as far from the stoical Esther Summerson of Bleak House fame as you could imagine.

Martin won a Best Actress Bafta for Esther back in 2005 and followed it up two years ago with another for Poppy Shakespeare, in which she played N, a young woman trapped inside the madness of the mental health system.

Add to that a struggling single mother in White Girl and a debt-ridden wife in Freefall, and it would seem that misery is Ms Martin’s forte.

But there’s much more to her than that. For one thing, she can dance, as she shows in On Expenses, a TV film that satirically lifts the lid on the financial skulduggery of MPs in Westminster.

It’s the story of Heather Brooke, the investigative journalist whose digging brought the story to light.

The role calls for Martin to be feisty, obstinate, argumentative and funny. But the bit that made Martin blanche was donning a leotard for Brooke in off-duty dance mode.

‘That was hell,’ she wails, batting back attempts to compliment her on how convincing she looked.

‘The night before I was due to film it, an actress friend, who’s also a dancer, said she’d come round and help me practise the routine.

But I was so stressed by the idea of dancing on screen that I got stuck into the Tia Maria – well, it was Christmas – and by the time she got there I was in no state for dancing.

What you see on screen is the sweat of alcohol.’ So the bit where she sticks her leg behind her head?

‘I have no memory of that – it must be a camera trick. But I do know that the day after I wasn’t able to move at all.’

Martin brings a whirlwind of energy to the part of Brooke, the unsung heroine of the expenses scandal, whose scoop-of-a-lifetime moment was stolen away at the 11th hour by a bureaucratic whistleblower.

‘I met Heather, she came on set,’ says Martin. ‘But I wasn’t trying for some kind of impersonation.

No one knew what she was like so there wasn’t the pressure on me that there was on Brian [Cox, who plays deposed speaker Michael Martin].’

It’s a busy time for the actress, who took time out to have her first baby (with partner, stage and film director Roger Michell) in April last year.

When On Expenses airs on TV she’ll be taking to the stage as put-upon novice nun Isabella in Measure For Measure.

Surprisingly, it’s the first time in a decade that this impressively versatile 32-year-old has tackled Shakespeare.

‘The parts have never come along,’ she says. ‘I’ve never seen myself as a Juliet, to be honest, and the roles I’d love I’ve been too young for. But I’ve got my eye on Lady Macbeth.’

Isabella isn’t in the Lady M league but she does give Martin the chance to explore a character who finds herself caught on the horns of a dilemma that has both moral and sexual angles.

Living in a Vienna gripped by depravity and political hypocrisy, pious Isabella is faced with the prospect of sacrificing her virginity to save her brother’s life.

Much trickery and political manoeuvring ensues. ‘The Duke, who’s in charge, tries to spin doctor himself. There’s meddling in all our lives, it’s like a Big Brother state where everything and everyone is watched.

So that relates very much to how it feels to live now,’ she stops, aware she might be taking herself a touch seriously.

‘Novice nun/investigative reporter – not so far apart at all. It’s a really fun cast, we don’t sit around discussing the themes of the play,’ she says, looking nonplussed at the thought.

‘We’re too obsessed with thinking of who we’d have on if we could do Come Dine With Me!’ OK, who?

‘Eric Cantona,’ she says, without missing a beat. ‘Keith Harris and Orville, Timmy Mallett.

Oh no, there are no women – I’ve got to have a woman. My friend Kate, who reads the news on Newsroom NorthEast. But Roger would have to do the cooking. I’m rubbish.’