Live Life Team
Anna Louise Friel was born in Rochdale, England on 12 July 1976, and from an early age knew that she wanted to be an actress.
Her first professional job came her way when she was 13, playing Michael Palin’s daughter in Channel 4’s drama serial ‘GBH’. More offers followed including ‘Emmerdale’ and the role of Beth Jordache in the soap opera ‘Brookside’. Anna made headlines when her character shared an on-screen passionate lesbian kiss with actress Nicola Stephenson.
Eyebrows were raised further three years later when she and fellow actors Jeremy Northam and Jonathon Rhys Meyers portrayed a ménage a trios in Stephen Poliakoff’s TV film ‘The Tribe’.
In 1998, she appeared on Broadway in the original run of the play ‘Closer’ and won the Desk Drama Award for Outstanding Actress before appearing in the West End in a production of ‘Lulu’, which then also transferred to Broadway.
Anna’s first film was released in 1998 and was ‘The Land Girls’ in which she plays lively hairdresser, Pru. The following year she played the wife of bank trader Nick Leeson opposite Ewan McGregor in ‘Rogue Trader’. She has also worked with other movie heavyweights such as Christian Bale, Richard E Grant, Gerard Butler and Calista Flockhart. In 2008, she was nominated for a Golden Globe for her work in American TV series ‘Pushing Daisies’.
Anna is currently playing Holly Golightly in ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s’ in the West End.
She lives with actor David Thewlis and they have a daughter named Gracie.
