“It’s so nice to be playing such a modern grown-up!” Anna Maxwell Martin is relishing her latest stage role, in Other Hands. “My character, Hayley, is an ambitious, self-assured woman who hits this crisis point and suddenly she’s not in control of her life anymore. She’s lost in a state of flux and drifting away from her boyfriend.”
We last saw the 27-year-old actress as Esther Summerson, the virtuous heroine of the BBC’s adaptation of Bleak House. “Hayley is confident, she’s intelligent, and she can express how she feels, something that was denied Esther in her time. And after six months of filming in a corset, this part is a very welcome change.”
Bleak House ended with Esther happily falling into the arms of her beloved doctor, Allan Woodcourt, played by Richard Harrington. Other Hands has brought them back together. “It helps that Richard and I already have a working relationship, a rapport, as you’re not starting from scratch,” says the actress. “He wanted to make sure I told you that he’s brilliant. That, of course, is a lie,” she adds, trailing off into laughter.
Maxwell Martin’s doe-eyed youthfulness and cherubic face have often got her cast much younger than her age. Her first job, after graduating from the London Academy of Dramatic Art in 2001, was as the manipulated teenage daughter in The Little Foxes at the Donmar Warehouse. Three years later she was playing even younger, earning an Olivier nomination as the 12-year-old heroine of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials at the National.
“It’s nice to be getting roles more my age,” she says now. She enjoyed playing “a really horrible piece of work” in Dumb Show, Joe Penhall’s Royal Court play about a newspaper sting, and would welcome more films after having had small parts in The Hours and Enduring Love.
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She always knew she wanted to be an actress, but doesn’t know where the impulse originated. “I’d love to say something like: ‘I saw Derek Jacobi and that was it!’ but I can’t. I don’t think my parents understood where the desire came from.”
She didn’t feel ready for drama school at 18 and first studied history at Liverpool University. But now she regards herself as a focused performer who doesn’t “get the jitters”. Since Bleak House, Maxwell Martin has been heartened that other roles being offered to her have not all been period adaptations. “I’m mulling a few things” is all she’ll say, although she has plenty of parts on her wish list, including Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing and Sally Bowles in Cabaret.
For now she is focusing on Other Hands. She says that she loves the way that “the dialogue reflects how Hayley and her boyfriend have been together for years. It makes it easier to play, it’s a sign of good writing.” She adds: “It’s great to be able to explore a modern relationship. I don’t think I’m ready for another bonnet part just yet!”