Anna Maxwell Martin, actor

0:00Hello, I'm Lauren Laverne and this is the Desert Island Discs podcast. Every week I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, book and luxury they'd want to take with them if they were cast away to a desert island. I hope you enjoy listening.

0:34My cast away this week is the actor Anna Maxwell Martin. Her stellar CV includes everything from Shakespeare and Dickens to the line of duty via the comedy series Motherland. She's an Emmy and double BAFTA winner who's been called the most un-typecast actress in Britain, equally at home in gritty dramas like ITV's Until I Kill You, as she is in crowd-pleasing crime like the BBC's Ludwig. She set her heart on performing when she was just a little girl, growing up in Yorkshire. Her scientist parents were, she says, bemused, but backed her all the way, driving her to singing contests where she belted out Whitney Houston songs to get a taste of being on stage.

1:13In recent years, she's also become a campaigner, speaking up for vulnerable children and families navigating the SEND system. Her advocacy is informed by experience, the sudden loss of her children's father and her own difficulties in finding the right support for her two girls in the wake of his death. She says,

1:45Anna Maxwell-Martin, welcome to Desert Island Discs. I want to retract everything I said there about the children. It's been one of those days. I regret all of that. Well, we've got lots to talk about, Anna, today. But I think we should start with your work and that idea of you being the least typecast actor in Britain. I mean, 25 years in the game, how have you managed it? I think you have to say no a lot because what happens is you do get offered the same thing over and over again. And so you have to be willing to sit at home and just say no and say, oh, I've done that, I don't want to do it again.

2:20But it's not, I don't think it's about boredom. It's also partly to do with ambition and also the people I looked up to and the type of actor I want to be and my interest in the profession. I just want to do all the things. Julie Walters is a big heroine of yours. Massive. She is my apex predator. I worked with Julie, which was absolutely brilliant. We had to sort of enter a scene. Sweet Anne Hathaway was in the scene and she was focused and she was concentrating and, you know, Julie and I were giggling off and then we got told off. But, yeah, she has always been my hero because Julie has done exactly that.

3:02She's always played all the things and she's incredible. And I think also she influenced a lot of how I work, I think. I think people think, well, I think they think I sort of muck around and I don't take it very seriously, but it's not that at all. It's that I do all the work and I prepare and I research and I think, I feel, I know my character better than anybody when I get onto the set. But then I want to let go of all that and just listen and also, most of all, just have a nice day. And I think that's what I saw Julie doing. So you're quite rigorous, but you have said that, you know, improv is the best training for actors.

3:46God, comedy improv is without a doubt. It's terrifying. you're standing with a crew that are literally that you know the boom ops just standing there hasn't laughed once and you think oh well i'll just plow on they'll find something in the edit so it's totally humiliating it's a really good training for just give it a go just keep trying don't get locked in by ideas or who you think you are or bogged down by thinking just do doing just do it so you like being in the moment on set and just you know sort of playing really How are you afterwards at appraising your performances? Are you someone who kind of looks back, reviews and judges yourself?

4:24I always, most of the time, think I'm brilliant. I do.

4:33Look, I'm really proud of myself. Don't you have to be? You have to champion yourself. I'm not going to go around my age sort of feeling really down on myself. I look back, I think, oh, I'm really proud of what I've achieved and strive to be better. And I don't, you know, when people make a meal of it or make it sound difficult, I want to say it's not. We get driven to, well, actually, my daughter, my youngest daughter put it really well. When she was at school once, somebody said to her, oh, what does your mummy do for a job? And she said, oh, a man comes to the house early in the morning and picks her up in a car and then takes her to a car park.

5:10and then she goes into a caravan and takes all her clothes off. So that is my job. I'm not a paramedic. I don't work for the NHS. I'm not a teacher or a TA. It's quite good. And then invariably as an actor, you have a laugh all day. Well, let's get started. Tell us about your first. My first song is I Love Taboogie by T-Rex. and I have chosen that because I really did want a recording of Julie Walters singing as Mrs Overall, but that wasn't possible. And so I want to celebrate. From the Acorn Antiques Opera, which I went to see when I was about 14. Which she takes off the overall and then there's another overall underneath and she's wafting around the tray.

5:54It's all stuck to the tray. Absolute genius. I mean, honestly, she's amazing. But anyway, this is for Julie really and her dancing around so brilliantly in Billy Elliot. We love to boogie. We love to boogie. Jitterbug boogie. Bowling billy boogie. We love to boogie. On a Saturday night. Belinda May Fender's got a can of lap on. Jamie lost a cherry walking all the way home. The passion of the earth blasted its mind. I Love To Boogie by T-Rex, which featured in the film Billy Elliot, starring Julie Walters. Anna Maxwell-Martin, you were born in Beverley, East Yorkshire in 1977, little sister to Adam.

6:46Your mum, Rosalind, is Scottish and your dad, Ivan, was from Northern Ireland. So how did they meet? at church a church sort of I want to say youth group but they weren't yes guess they were semi youths they'd both come down to London so dad was a post grad and mum had come down she'd come down from Aberdeen she was working I think at that point in Guy's hospital and she was living at the I may have got lots of this wrong, but she was living at the YMCA, or the equivalent for ladies, and you don't know anyone, do you? So they both went along to the church in Chelsea, which was a Scottish Presbyterian church, and they met there.

7:34And both scientists, so would have had a lot in common. Yeah, faith and science. Hey, what a hodgepodge. So tell me a bit more about them. Your mum first. What area did she work in? What was her special? So she was sort of in research and actually what she really wanted to do was be sort of a forensic pathologist. But that wasn't really possible at that time. But she would have been absolutely brilliant. Yeah, she's quite amazing, my mum. Very, very practical, very together. She's got a really good sense of humour. It can be really silly with my mum, yeah. And your dad, Ivan, was managing director of a pharmaceutical company.

8:15by the time you came along and were growing up. When you think about it, what comes to mind? He's like, for me, it's like the spine that holds you up is my dad. I feel he's shaped so much about how I approach the world, my thinking, how I contribute to life. I didn't say the world then. Make myself sound like a Dalai Lama. I'm not contributing to the world. But how I contribute, let's leave it there. And when I think about work and doing well in my career, I think that my mum and dad together, definitely as parents and so very much my dad, never, ever questioned it. They never questioned the choice.

9:03They never said, you know, it's very impactful on a child when you say, well, why do you want to do that? They never even said that because it's a negative saying, why do you want to do that? You just do. You said he was your greatest cheerleader. He was absolutely. Yeah. And that cheer, although I lost my dad at 24, I feel exceptionally grateful I had 24 years. and I feel like that amount of unequivocal cheerleading just filled up the tank and it sustained me throughout my life. Yeah. So were you the kind of kid who would put on plays? Were you kind of getting the family to sit down and watch you perform?

9:47No, constantly. We lived in a cul-de-sac and all the kids got together. My brother and I used to love make-up songs. That's all I wanted to do. So I did lots of plays at primary school and then, yeah, I got to secondary and then I would do drama and singing outside of school and I was in a little singing troupe. But then I started doing singing competitions as well. How did that go? It went well until the final hurdle. So I sang a song called London is London, dressed as a pearly queen, and I got to the London final. Was it in the accent, London is London? Oh, yeah.

10:27And I was pipped at the post, didn't make it to gold. Do you remember who I was? Yes. Oh, gosh, I remember her. Who was it? What did she have that you didn't? She sang opera. I thought you should be in a different competition, love. This is a competition for your basic singer, not your opera singer. Let's have some more music, Anna Maxwell-Martin. Your second choice today, what's it going to be? Well, my second choice is The Greatest Love of All by Whitney Houston. and this is a song that The Troop, I now call them The Troop, that was not the name. What was the name? No, it didn't have a name.

11:03Anyway, it's The Greatest Love of All, love the lyrics, stand by them all. I remember once we went on a holiday to Tossa in Spain on a coach from Beverly to Tossa and I can tell you that's a long, long coach ride. You weren't allowed to do a number two on the coach, only a number one. So I think most people left that trip with bowel problems. and I remember I just played Whitney Houston my Whitney Houston tape on my Walkman endlessly I loved Whitney so much I decided long ago never to walk in anyone's shadows if I fail if I succeed at least I'll live as I believe no matter what they take from me They can't take away my dignity Because the greatest Whitney Houston and the greatest love of all.

12:01Anna Maxwell-Martin, you've said that when you were little, you were a dweeb and a happy weirdo. What did you mean by that? Do you remember? Stand by it? Yeah, I had a patch. An eye patch? I had an eye patch. My dad cut my hair with, you know, the bowl. I mean, we all had that, didn't we? The bowl cut, yeah. Yeah. and I was such a happy dweeb, yeah. You have described yourself as a drama queen as well. How did that play out? In what way? I was feeling things very intensely. I was pretty anxious, but at the same time, very driven. You know, I really loved doing what I was doing, and I wanted to do all the things.

12:43Well, my dad made me play the cello, but I did want to. So I played the cellos in all the orchestras, the choirs, as doing my drama. It's all I thought about. I didn't, it's just all I wanted. So it was all performing and, you know, the art. I don't know who's performing. I don't think of it as performing. Because I think I'm quite shy. I think it was sort of, I don't know, escaping a bit or. Yeah. I think I felt, and then this went through my 20s and then after my dad died really chronically. But I think even as a young kid, we left this cul-de-sac I grew up in and it was like Nirvana. You know, I'm pretty sure that song, all Nirvana songs were written about my cul-de-sac because it was heaven.

13:30And when we moved, I remember feeling quite lonely quite a lot of the time. So you moved into Beverley Town, having grown up just outside. Yes. Mother announced that she didn't want to give us lifts anywhere. So we moved into town. Tell me about school. How did you get on at school? I loved school. I loved doing work. I loved achieving. I used to ask for extra homework. I was that horrible kid. Were you picked on? No. And if I had been, I wouldn't have noticed, Lauren. Honestly, I've been always quite good at just quite resilient at getting on with things. You've said before that you were pretty grateful for who you were as a kid.

14:11Tell me what you meant by that. I think, as I say, I was quite resilient. I had a good sense of self. And it seems like, you know, I can see there's this picture. I'm quite an intense person. But I am a bit of a fish swimming around the bowl. So I think I feel things deeply and then I just move on and forget. I can't retain any information. So I think that sort of always helped me to sort of shape shift and move on. and I don't really navel gaze or anything like that. I think I have an outward-looking disposition. All right, Anna, let's have some more music. It's your third choice today. What have you gone for?

14:54Oh, Together in Electric Dreams by Phil Oki and Giorgio Moroder. And I've chosen that because it's really about friendship. And I have an amazing, wonderful, life-affirming group of friends from university. We have been through so many things together. They have got me through so many things and I hope and feel I've contributed positively to their lives. And recently I have an exceptional friend I made when our children were young. She's just battled cancer. It was a difficult couple of years and I watched her handle that with such grace and aplomb and humour. but I remember after that long road we were at the garden centre and despite cancer she's always been an exceptionally mentally and physically strong person and we went to the garden centre and we got near those big bags of compost and they're heavy aren't they yeah should come over here come over here try and lift this compost deadlift this compost come on I said I can't Like, you know, I can't do it.

16:04Of course, I picked it up, Lauren. I just couldn't get it above the shoulder. I couldn't. I went, Rach, it's not possible. And of course, she turns around. She's just battled cancer. She just flings it in the air above her head. And I looked at that in that moment with the bag of compost floating over, perilously over her head. And I thought, I love you so much. I do. I just thought, I love you so much. Everything you stand for, everything you've been through. And you're still flinging compost around. And this is for her? It's for all my friends and her, yeah. I only knew you for a while I never saw your smile Till it was time to go Time to go away Time to go away Sometimes it's hard to recognise Love comes as a surprise And it's too late It's just too late to stay Together in Electric Dreams, Phil Oakey and Giorgio Moroder.

17:09Anna Maxwell-Martin, you graduated from Lambda in 2001 and within just a few months you were at the Donmar Warehouse in The Little Foxes, directed by Marianne Elliott and starring Penelope Wilton. That must have felt very special. Yeah, it was like a dream come true. I can't tell you, I've never taken it for granted and luckily my dad saw that show. He died just after, the day after the last night that we finished that show. Yeah, so he actually did see me working. What did it mean to have him work? Well, he'd seen plays and things at university. Professionally, I mean. I think I did definitely think, Fuey, that he's seen something and I'm not just a layabout, have actually been employed.

17:54He could see the beginning for you. Yeah, he would have always had faith that it was going to happen. He would never have doubted it. Like, just no way. No way. So he died the night after your final show of the run. Yes. And he was staying with you and your brother, wasn't he? Yes, he was, yeah. He'd been really poorly, but I was very in denial about that. I think I was probably a pretty selfish 20-year-old. And I hadn't fully engaged with that. Maybe I couldn't or I didn't want to. But we'd had a really nice day the day before. I was rehearsing another play in the day, actually, whilst I was doing the Donmar thing in the evening, and he was testing my lines, and he'd really put his shoulder to the wheel on that.

18:35You know, like he'd do all the parts, do all the voices. He was just lovely, my dad. And then, yeah, and then it just all went wrong. So you'd heard him ill in the night, and then went to the bathroom and he was there? Yeah, I went to say goodbye. I'd been up a couple of times. He wasn't very well. And I thought I knew all about that. I thought I knew all about how to help him because I'd had food poisoning for the first time on the job. And someone would give me, you know, you don't know anything when you're young, do you? Someone would give me Pepto, this thing called Pepto-Bismol, miracle worker.

19:15And I tried to offer Daddy some of that. And that wasn't going to cut the mustard because he was having a really big brain bleed by then. And then, yeah, it just all unfolded. It was like a horror, really. And I didn't process that. I wasn't allowed to, and I didn't process that for a long, long time. Years and years and years. You were diagnosed with PTSD? Yeah. So why? Yeah, my late 30s. You said you couldn't, you weren't allowed to process it. Why not? There was just a culture of not talking about it within my family, but also not out of malice or any bad intention at all. There's a lot of love in my family.

19:58It's just that these things are very difficult for people to deal with and you have to appreciate that and have kindness for that. And I also was very young and nobody, I was very aware that no one wants a Debbie Downer around, but I felt chronically alone. Yeah. So processing grief and death and trauma is very, very difficult. And it is just a road you sort of have to trudge down. And when you think about your dad now, how do you remember him? Has the way that you remember him changed? There were lots of things I couldn't remember. And now I do. It's a bit like the clouds clearing because you're not swamped with overwhelm.

20:50Just then I did a tiny bit. Did you see I nearly kind of went, but I can sort of handle it and I can hear him, see him. And I think for a long time in that wilderness, I just, I couldn't. It's too frightening to go near the feeling because you're worried about how intense it's going to be. Yeah, and what happened to him and what that experience was like of him dying, which was not a good death. But, you know, overwhelmingly, I really feel so overjoyed that I had such a loving and supportive dad. So I feel inordinately lucky. Anna, let's have some more music. What's next? Oh, it's Puccini's O Mio Babino Caro, which means To My Beloved Father, and it's Maria Callas singing it.

21:41We did play it at my dad's funeral, but it's also that when I thought about acting when I was young, a film I watched over and over again, and I was thinking, I just want to be in a film like that, was Room with a View, and this is played in Room with a View. I don't know if you know the scene, but it's when they kiss in a poppy field, and it's so romantic. Oh, my God, it's so romantic. And I also think, oh, I'd love something like that to happen to me. I'd love to be, like, grabbed and manhandled in a field. And I just wanted to be in films like that and I love this song, it's beautiful and it reminds me of my dad.

22:44Oh, my baby, dear, Oh, mi piace bello e bello Andare in Porta Rosa A conferarla dentro Si, si, ci voglio andare Mi sentar a sentar Part of Puccini's O Mio Babino Caro, performed by Maria Callas with the Philharmonia Orchestra, conducted by Tullio Serafin. Anna Maxwell-Martin, while you were experiencing that private grief, your professional life was taking off. Just months after leaving drama school, you appeared in the Tom Stoppard trilogy, The Coast of Utopia, at the National Theatre. How did you navigate that professional success while also coming to terms with what you were going through? Well, I, you know, the overriding feeling was like, yes, I've got here.

24:09I used to stand on the bridge outside the National and think, I want to be in there one day. but yeah it was difficult I was dealing with like a bit of I wouldn't know it's quite extreme agoraphobia but a little bit of that and some anxiety but I I felt lucky to be there and then the National was very good to me they are you know they're very loyal to you if you work hard for them and I and I stayed there and I did I think four productions there met Roger there I did His Dark Materials there with Nick Heitner, which was an incredible production to be part of. So all of these things are absolutely supercharging your career and changing your life.

24:49You mentioned meeting Roger Michel, who'd directed the film Notting Hill. He auditioned you for a play called Honour. The two of you quickly fell in love. What drew you to him? What do you remember about meeting him? I don't know, really. I don't know if we quickly fell in love, but what did happen is that I walked in the room. I don't know, Roger just had a vibe he just had a vibe I left the room and I thought oh I love him I don't mean romantically I don't know Roger had a silent strength it just made him such a good director such a good dad and it was that I just thought oh who is he and then we started rehearsing the play and Roger was also a very sweet person and And so, like, you know, one thing I loved about Roger, he never tried to be cool or anything.

25:43There are people in our industry that try to be cool or whatever. Roger would come in his anorak and he'd have his, like, sort of hold-all, like a hold-all bag, and then he'd get his Tupperware out and he would have made his lunch and then he'd take his lunch out and then he'd hang his hold-all bag on a special hook. We'd call it the hold-all hook. And you could have a real laugh with him. He was really daft and silly and he was a special person. So there was quite an age gap between the two of you, wasn't there? He was 48, you were 26 when you first met. Yes. Yeah, I mean the age gap is something in hindsight.

26:25I didn't ever feel like we had an age gap, but of course, I don't know, it does become self-evident and yeah, I don't know. It's difficult to talk about that really, I think. Yeah, okay. If I'm being honest. I mean, I miss him. Yeah, of course. 2003 was professionally a hugely successful year for you. You got rave reviews for your starring role in His Dark Materials at the National Theatre. A year later, you won your first BAFTA playing Esther Somerson in the BBC's Bleak House. Were you able to enjoy those successes at the time? Oh, no, I don't think I did. Not really. God, I've never been asked that.

27:10No, I was worried about the next thing. And I think I was quite aware that I was holding myself back because I'm not very outwardly ambitious. I'm quite shy. I wouldn't be able to go into a room and approach director, say, hey, I'm so and so. Here I am. I know you. I know all your work. I know your entire oof. Give me a job. I couldn't do that. Yeah, walking into rooms is pretty daunting. At the beginning of my career, I think the first day of donuts and meet and greet, I'd be on the tube and I'd think, oh God, I'll just say I'm ill today and I'll go in tomorrow when we're doing the actual work.

27:46I wouldn't want to do the donuts and the meet and greet. I'd just feel too shy. Let's have some more music, Anna. It's your fifth choice to do. What's it going to be? You know, grief is a form of heartbreak. and then there's heartbreak, isn't there? Romantic heartbreak. When I think about it when I was young, you know, it is such a monumentous and shaping moment, how you come through it, how you come through it with humility. But at the time, you humiliate yourself so much, don't you? You really do. You make an absolute donkey of yourself. And did you? oh god I did I yeah I've been heartbroken a couple of times and I think yeah a completely humiliating prostrating yourself in desperation I mean an absolute dork and so I really wanted to include a song about heartbreak because it really shapes you doesn't it and so a song I loved and I really loved the album but a song that reminded me of a particularly difficult heartbreak in my 20s was dry your eyes by the streets.

28:56Please let me show you where we could only just be for us. I can change and I can grow or we could adjust. The wicked thing about us is we always have trust. We can even have an open relationship if you must. I look at her, she stares almost straight back at me. But her eyes glaze over like she's looking straight through me. Then her eyes must have closed for what seems an eternity. When they open up, she's looking down at her feet. Dry your eyes, mate I know it's hard to take But her mind has been made up The streets and dry your eyes. Anna Maxwell-Martin, you've said that when you started out in acting, you were very earnest and took things quite seriously.

29:38How did that work out? Not well. No, you've got to lose that pretty quick. I probably didn't lose it quick enough. I just wanted to take the work really seriously. And then as you go on in your chosen career, maybe you just can relax into it a bit more. And what was it that helped you relax? Was it just a matter of time? Well, I had children and then I really couldn't be thinking about much other than the children and the timetable and the logistics of it all. And so I still worked as hard in prep, but then I was just, yeah, just running onto a set and getting on with it. Didn't get bogged down with it.