Anna Maxwell Martin

Her reputation was made on television, and specifically on literary adaptation. Esther Summerson in the BBC's Bleak House won her a British Academy Television Award, and the Channel 4 adaptation of Poppy Shakespeare won her a second. Both are performances of restraint under enormous pressure, which turned out to be the thing she does better than almost anyone.

What she did with that reputation is the interesting part. Instead of settling into corsets she went sideways into comedy as Julia in Motherland, a woman so far past her own limit that the show could not be funny without her, and took a BAFTA nomination for it. Then she turned up in Line of Duty as DCS Patricia Carmichael, an internal-affairs officer with no interest in being liked, and built a series' worth of menace out of a raised eyebrow. Line of Duty itself is not among the credits listed here.

The period work continued alongside: Elizabeth Darcy in Death Comes to Pemberley, Bessy Higgins in North & South, Mary Shelley in The Frankenstein Chronicles, Beelzebub in Good Omens. In 2025 she won an International Emmy for best actress. British drama now calls her when a part needs a person rather than a performance.