- Born
- Height5′ 7″ (1.70 m)
- Anne-Marie Duff is an English actress, born on October 8, 1970 in Southall, London. Her parents, Brendan and Mary (née Doherty), are from Donegal, Ireland. Her father worked as a painter and decorator and her mother worked in a shoe shop.
She first came to the attention of the British public for her role as Margaret in The Magdalene Sisters (2002) and as Fiona Gallagher in the successful TV series Shameless (2004), where she met her future husband, James McAvoy. She went on to play Queen Elizabeth I opposite Tom Hardy's Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester in the four-part miniseries The Virgin Queen (2005).
In Nowhere Boy (2009), Duff played John Lennon's mother, Julia, a role for which she won British Independent Film Award for Best Supporting Actress. She played Violet Miller in Suffragette (2015), a working-class woman who introduces Maud Watts (Carey Mulligan) to the fight for women's rights in east London. "Violet is extraordinary, she's a firebrand - a tornado that comes into Maud's life and changes it forever. I found her thrilling," says Duff. In 2017, she will appear as Hyzenthlay in a new BBC animated miniseries of Watership Down.
Duff has also taken on many theatre roles, including Joan of Arc in George Bernard Shaw's "Saint Joan" in 2007 and Alma Rattenbury in Terence Rattigan's "Cause Célèbre" at The Old Vic, London in 2011.
She has been married to McAvoy since November 11, 2006. They have one child, a son named Brendan after Duff's father. On May 13, 2016, Duff and McAvoy announced their decision to divorce.- IMDb Mini Biography By: Mel G
- SpouseJames McAvoy(November 11, 2006 - 2016) (divorced, 1 child)
- ParentsMary DuffBrendan Duff
- Met ex-husband James McAvoy while filming Shameless (2004).
- Almost turned down her role in Shameless (2004). However, her mother changed her mind, saying that the script rang true because "it is about what people have when they don't have anything except laughter, sex and the stars".
- Gave birth to her first child at age 39, a son Brendan Duff McAvoy on 26 February 2010 at St Mary's Hospital, Praed Street, Westminster. The child's father is her husband (now ex-husband), James McAvoy.
- She was nominated for the Laurence Olivier Theatre Award in 2000 (1999 season) for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in "Collected Stories" at the Haymarket Theatre.
- Duff said her son is named after her dad Brendan, a painter and decorator who moved to Britain with his wife Mary from Ireland. She and her husband James McAvoy chose not to know the sex of the baby before his birth in London in 2010.
- In theatre, there's the director, the writer, and below them the actor. In film, it's the actors who are most important. That goes against the grain for me. It's been amazing for me to see the self-confidence of actors who insist on having control, because it's going to be their faces 20ft high in the posters. I've been shocked by film actors - 25 and under - having such confidence and cockiness to rewrite a scene. My background is more about the director being in control. It's all about yielding. It's an oddly submissive relationship in which you're moulded, Pygmalion-style.
- I don't tend to get asked to do the same thing. I thought after I played Fiona [in Shameless (2004)], "Here we go..." But it's like a fruit machine, I never know what's going to come out.
- [on being shy] If you'd asked me to talk to a boy I'd have shat myself. Boys, friends, I didn't have any of that.
- [on her time at the Drama Centre in north London] I lost my virginity. I fell in love. I thought, "This is great. It fits."
- [on the disciplined atmosphere at the Drama Centre] There were all these rules you had to obey, often for intangible reasons. I was always receiving these letters saying that if I didn't get my s--- together I'd be out. We used to call Central [School of Arts and Drama] Butlin's and they used to call us "the Trauma Centre". It was very tough on women.
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