Anna Friel

At 47 years old, Anna Friel has this physical status:

Anna Louise Friel (born 12 July 1976) is an English actress.

Born in Rochdale, Greater Manchester, she has been performing professionally since the age of 13.

Friel rose to international prominence when she appeared as Beth Jordache on British soap opera Brookside (1993–95), and then appeared on ABC's Pushing Daisies (2007–09).

She has received numerous awards, including an International Emmy Award, a Drama Desk Award, a National Television Award, an RTS Award, and an honorary degree, as well as BAFTA's Award, Saturn Award, Genie Award, and Czech Lion Award nominations.

Friel made her film debut in The Land Girls (1998).

She has since appeared in numerous publications, including A Midsummer Night's Dream and Rogue Trader (both 1999), Sunset Strip (2000), Me Without You (2001), Goal! (2005), Bathory (2008), Land of the Lost (2009), London Boulevard, You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger (both 2010), Limitless (2011), The Cleanse (2013), and I.T.

(both 2016) Friel has appeared in many British and American television series, including The Jury (2004), Odyssey (2015), The Girlfriend Experience (2017), and Marcella (2016–present).

Patrick Marber's Closer (Broadway, 1999), and the West End productions of Breakfast at Tiffany's (2009) and Uncle Vanya (2012) include stage scenes.

Early life

Anna Louise Friel was born in Rochdale, Greater Manchester, on July 12, 1976. Julie Bamford, née Bamford, is a special needs teacher. Desmond "Des" Friel, her father, was born in Belfast and raised in County Donegal, Ireland. He is a former French teacher and folk guitarist who now owns a web design firm. Michael is a doctor who did television commercial work for Hovis in his youth.

Friel attended a local Catholic school and later Holy Cross College. She began her acting career at the Oldham Theatre Workshop.

Personal life

After the pair met on a flight to Cannes in 2001, Friel began a friendship with actor David Thewlis. Friel died and was rushed to a hospital, needing emergency surgery and two blood transfusions for a ruptured ovarian cyst later this year. It was discovered that she has endometriosis and has a difficult timeconceiving. Despite this, she became pregnant and gave birth to Gracie Ellen Friel, a daughter who was born on September 9, 2005, at Portland Hospital, London. Gracie Fields was named after her mother and grandmother, Ellen and Mary, after Gracie Fields.

After almost ten years together, Friel and Thewlis separated in December 2010.

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Career

At age 13, Friel made her professional acting debut, playing the daughter of Michael Palin's character in the television drama G.B.H., which aired in the United Kingdom in 1991 and was nominated for numerous BAFTA awards. This resulted in appearances on Coronation Street and Emmerdale. Beth Jordache appeared on the Channel 4 soap opera Brookside in 1992. She appeared on screen for two years and was instrumental in some of the series's most well-known plots, including the death of her on-screen father and a storyline based on the first ever pre-nine-o'clock watershed lesbian kiss in British television history. When it was announced as part of the 2012 Summer Olympics opening ceremony, the kiss continued to be broadcast around the world (including in 76 countries where homosexuality is unlawful). "I was identified by that kiss for a long time," she later said. And I didn't want to be. I spent years in lesbian roles because it felt like going back to Beth. [But] it did make me want to see parts that displayed extreme aspects of women.' In 1995, Friel received a National Television Award in the category of Most Popular Actress for her work on Brookside.

Following her appearance on the program, Friel appeared in Tales from the Crypt with Imelda Staunton and appeared in Stephen Poliakoff's film The Tribe (1998), which drew criticism for including a ménage à trois sex scene. With Rachel Weisz and Robert Louis Stevenson's St. Ives (1999), she appeared in several British films, including The Land Girls (1999), with Ewan McGregor; and Mad Cows (1999) with Joanna Lumley. In the 1999 film version of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, she appeared as Hermia.

Friel made her Broadway debut in Patrick Marber's Closer, which ran for 172 performances at the Music Box Theatre in New York during this period. Critics adored the performance, many of whom even referred to Friel as a highlight. "It's the exquisitely beautiful Friel" that is the subject of this collection, according to Charles Isherwood of Variety. Her Alice is both the nihilistic core of the play and the center's tender center, as well as the play's paradoxical mix of strength and fragility [she] brings to it. It's a star-making performance." Friel received the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Featured Actress in a Play later this year.

In 2001, Friel made her West End debut in a Frank Wedekind's Lulu adaptation. She appeared in An Everlasting Piece (2000), directed by Barry Levinson and co-starring Billy Connolly; Sunset Strip (2000), opposite Jared Leto; Me Without You (2001), opposite Michelle Williams; and Richard Donner's big-budget fantasy-adventure film Timeline (2003), in which she played Gerard Butler's love interest. She also appeared in The War Bride (2001), for which she received a Genie Award nomination for Best Actress.

Friel's next appearance came in the television film Watermelon (2003). Attorney Megan Delaney appeared in The Jury, an American legal drama series that aired on Fox for a single season in 2004. When talking about her first appearance on American television, she later expressed: "You will never know how much work it is," she said, and I was telling them not to be concerned because they were used to it." But, my God, were they right... you run off the scene and continue running and back on. It's so fast and well planned, but it's also very difficult, hard bloodwork."

In 2005, Friel appeared as a Geordie nurse in the sports drama Goal! She appeared in the Canadian film Niagara Motel in the first year and was named an Honorary Doctorate by the University of Bolton for her contributions to the performing arts.

In 2007, Friel appeared in Pushing Daisies, an American comedy-drama television series created by Bryan Fuller, which aired on ABC from 2007 to 2009. During its two-season run, the show received rave reviews, and Friel's appearance earned her a Golden Globe nomination. However, it was revealed in November 2008 that Pushing Daisies had been cancelled due to lower ratings. Friel was offered six television appearances during the following year's pilot season, but she turned down all of them in favour of focusing on her film career. In Bathory (2008), an historical drama starring Juraj Jakubisko, she appeared as the title role. For her appearance, Friel was nominated for a Czech Lion Award.

Will Ferrell co-starred Friel in Land of the Lost, a big-budget adventure film based on the television series of the same name. Holly Golightly appeared in an adaptation of Truman Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's, which attracted a lot of attention because of its nudity. The production received mixed feedback, but Friel's portrayal of Holly Golightly (one of her "all time favorites heroines") was lauded; Alice Jones of The Independent described her as "infectious" as she posed beautifully in a series of ever more lavishly bowed cocktail dresses, she was a "provocative and child-like" on stage, "not a bewildering stage presence, at once perceptive and child-like." Friel remained nude in the show; a snapshot of her nude scene from her preview run on the internet, which inspired increased security at performances.

Friel was nominated for RTS Awards in November 2009 for her portrayal of a struggling single mother in the British drama series The Street.

In the Woody Allen-directed comedy You Will Meet a Tall Stranger in 2010, Friel appeared with Anthony Hopkins and Naomi Watts. She co-starred with Bradley Cooper and Robert De Niro in the sci-fi thriller Limitless in the same year as Colin Farrell and Keira Knightley in the crime drama London Boulevard.

In an episode of the mockumentary series Come Fly With Me, Friel appeared as a fictionalized version of herself. She appeared on Neverland on the SyFy channel in the same year (a prequel to J.M.). Peter Pan of Barrie (Michael) received critical acclaim for her role in the ITV drama Without You, which earned critical acclaim. Following strong praise, Friel returned to the West End to appear as Yelena in an adaptation of Chekhov's Uncle Vanya. She starred in the BBC series Public Enemies (2012); portrayed Steve Coogan's wife in The Look of Love (2013), a biopic based on Paul Raymond's life; and appeared in the British film Having You (2013) opposite Andrew Buchan.

In September 2013, Friel was starring Kyle Chandler in the Showtime pilot The Vatican directed by Ridley Scott. Showtime had decided not to continue with a complete collection as previously planned but later this year.

In 2015, Friel appeared in the lead role of Sergeant Odelle Ballard in American Odyssey, a NBC network show. She appeared in the acclaimed Norwegian miniseries The Heavy Water War (UK title: The Saboteurs), a drama set during World War II. Shed Crew (2015), based on the non-fiction book of the same name, The Cleanse, in which she co-starred with Anjelica Huston, followed her. T. I.T. Tomato Red (2017), a thriller directed by John Moore and starring Pierce Brosnan; and the Irish-Canadian crime drama Tomato Red (2017).

In 2017, Friel appeared on the second season of The Girlfriend Experience, a drama series created by Steven Soderbergh for the Starz network. Erica Myles, a Republican entangled in two-person relationships, was described as "fantastic" and "outstanding" by Friel's portrayal of her as "fantastic" and "outstanding." Friel said that the role was her "most demanding job to date" due to the series's hectic work schedule and the explicit nature of its sex scenes. She was nominated for a British Academy Television Award for her role in the six-part BBC drama Broken earlier this year.

Friel has been playing the title role in the British "Nordic" noir detective series Marcella since 2016. She received the International Emmy Award for Best Actress (2017) for her appearances. "I practically walked out of it after I'd accepted it" because she was thinking, 'Oh God, how can I do this?' There are so many exceptional female detectives that have done it so well that I don't know what I should do differently. In 2018, it was announced that the show would return for a third season.

In October 2018, Friel starred as the parent of a transgender child in Butterfly. Lucy Mangan of The Guardian characterized the miniseries as "important, truthful, and full of fictional characters," while the New Statesman felt that Friel's portrayal of a mother "racked by shame" was "sterling." "We felt a great responsibility to make it as realistic as possible," Friel wrote.

I said, 'do you not feel represented?'

And they said, 'no'. People have so many ideas and opinions, but they may not be completely informed."

Friel starred Sharon Pici, a Kansas City detective, in The Box, a dramatic play that premiered on Viaplay on November 28, 2021. Nicky Roman, a singer-songwriter who was active in the field of country music dramas in 2022, starred in Monarch as Nicky Roman, a singer-songwriter determined to pass on her family's legacy while still finding her own path in the industry. Friel performed all of her characters' songs, which includes a blend of covers and originals.

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