Anna Maxwell Martin: I don't like playing saps

The Guardian

Published: 16th Feb 2011

Author: Emine Saner

Source

As a drama student, Anna Maxwell Martin used to go for walks along the Thames. "I would see the National theatre," she recalls, "and think, 'I'm going to be there one day.'" Two years later, in 2003, she was – playing Lyra in His Dark Materials, and bagging an Olivier nomination in the process.

Such single-mindedness seems at odds with the slight person sitting before me in a London bar, finishing her stories with great squeals. Like the one about her mother inviting all her friends round after Maxwell Martin won her first Bafta in 2006, for playing orphan Esther Summerson in the BBC's star-studded Bleak House; the guests were invited, she says, "just to look at it!" Other times, she's thoughtful, delivering considered answers with a faint Yorkshire accent.

Though a self-confessed "show-off", she is modest about her work: "I'm starting to think I'm really crap at theatre." This despite rave reviews for last year's Measure for Measure at the Almeida; her other Bafta was for 2008's Poppy Shakespeare on Channel 4. It comes across not so much as self-doubt, however, as a desire not to rest on her laurels.

We're about to see more of the 32-year-old, in BBC adaptations of two books: South Riding, based on Winifred Holtby's novel about changes sweeping a 1930s Yorkshire town; and The Night Watch, Sarah Waters's novel about young Londoners during the second world war. "I felt compelled to do South Riding. I spent my childhood on those beaches and felt nobody else should be allowed to do it." She plays Sarah Burton, who comes home from London, ambitious and idealistic, to run a girls' school. "She makes mistakes a lot because she's so strident, and I love that about her. I like characters with huge foibles. I don't like playing characters that are good, sappy."

As befits the Sunday evening slot, South Riding is a quality period drama: the adaptation is by Andrew Davies, the cast includes David Morrissey and Penelope Wilton, the backdrop is Yorkshire at its most ravishing, and the story takes in everything from mental illness to poverty and death.

In The Night Watch, due soon though still unscheduled, she plays Kay, a lesbian ambulance worker who sifts through bombed houses for bodies. "After the war, she's utterly broken – and not just by heartbreak, but also by the fact that she believes the war is going to be a pivotal moment for the lesbian movement, that things will change and gay women will be out and proud like her. But that isn't the case."

It's a racy book. "Oh my goodness! I have all my saucy scenes with Claire Foy – it's like Little Dorrit and Esther Summerson getting off with each other!" (Foy played the lead in the BBC's 2008 Little Dorrit.) Doing sex scenes with a woman, says Maxwell Martin, is much better than with a man. "In Claire and my case, we're heterosexual, so it's purely acting. But with a man, you're like, 'Oh God, does he think I fancy him, does he think I'm minging, is he going to get an erection?' It's awful." She whoops with laughter.

Maxwell Martin, married with a young daughter, always wanted to be an actor, to the bemusement of her parents, who worked in pharmaceuticals. Did she ever harbour Hollywood ambitions? "I went a few years ago, and a couple of times I nearly got things that were big. But I just couldn't do it. I am shy – going to parties kills me. I don't have that muscle that makes you get out there and grab it. I wish I did."

She says it matter-of-factly, rather than sadly. Anyway, she says, it's far better to be the odd-looking type, and wait for the interesting roles. "For some actors, their star shines brightly and fizzles out. My star doesn't shine that brightly, but it buzzes along. Hopefully, that means it will last longer."