Francesca Annis

Francesca Annis
Born	Francesca M. P. Annis 14 May 1945 (1945-05-14) Kensington, London, England, UK
Occupation	Actress
Years active	1959–present
Partner	Patrick Wiseman (1976-?) Ralph Fiennes (1994-2006)
Children	Charlotte, Taran, Andreas (Wiseman)

Francesca Annis (born 14 May 1945) is an English actress, known for her film and television appearances, most recently in the BBC series Wives and Daughters, Cranford, and Deceit.

Early life and education

Annis was born in Kensington, London in 1945 to an English father, Lester William Anthony Annis (1914–2001) and a Brazilian-French mother, Mariquita Purcell (1913–2009). She has two brothers, Quenton D. and Tony P. Annis. Her family moved to Brazil when Annis was a year old, spending six years there before returning to England when she was 7. There she was educated at a convent school. She trained as a ballet dancer and then studied drama at the Corona Theatre School.

Career

Francesca Annis began acting professionally in her teens, and made her film debut in The Cat Gang (1959). In 1967 she played Estella in a television adaptation of Great Expectations. She also presented children's television programmes.

Annis gained notoriety for her performance as Lady Macbeth in Roman Polanski's controversial 1971 film interpretation of Macbeth in which she performs the sleepwalking soliloquy in the nude. The critic Kenneth Tynan was present when the scene was shot:

"Francesca does it very sportingly and with no fuss ... though of course the set is closed, great curtains are drawn around the acting area ... and the wardrobe mistress rushes to cover Francesca with a dressing gown the instant Roman says, 'Cut'."

Annis continued to be a leading television actress throughout the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, appearing in series such as Edward the Seventh as Lillie Langtry, a role she starred in with Lillie; Madame Bovary; and Parnell and the Englishwoman, in which she played Kitty O'Shea; as well as the miniseries Reckless (1998) and its 2000 sequel. In autumn 2007 Annis co-starred with Michael Gambon and Judi Dench as Lady Ludlow (an aristocrat opposed to the education of the lower classes) in the BBC1 costume-drama series Cranford.

Her films have included Krull (1983) and Dune (1984). She appeared as "Tuppence" with James Warwick as "Tommy" in Agatha Christie's Partners in Crime stories. She also appeared in Onassis: The Richest Man in the World, in which she played Jacqueline Kennedy.

While becoming a well-known face on screen, she has also enjoyed a successful stage career, playing many leading roles with the Royal Shakespeare Company, starting with playing Juliet in Romeo and Juliet in 1977 alongside Ian McKellen, she even acted in Luciana in Trevor Nunn's musical version of The Comedy of Errors. At the National Theatre in 1981 she played Natalya Petrovna in Peter Gill's production of Ivan Turgenev's A Month in the Country. At the Comedy Theatre in September 2005, Annis starred in Epitaph for George Dillon with Joseph Fiennes. Annis returned to the stage in April 2009 to star as Mrs. Conway in Rupert Goold's National Theatre revival of J. B. Priestley's Time and the Conways.

Personal life

Annis has three children from a long-term relationship with actor Patrick Wiseman that began in 1976. Beginning in 1994, Annis was in a long relationship with actor Ralph Fiennes, who left his younger wife, Alex Kingston. They met while performing Hamlet, in which Annis portrayed Gertrude with Fiennes playing Hamlet. On February 7, 2006, Fiennes and Annis announced their separation after 11 years together.

Selected filmography

• The Cat Gang (1959)
• Carry On Teacher (1959)
• No Kidding (1960)
• The Young Jacobites (1960)
• His and Hers (1961)
• Cleopatra (1963)
• West 11 (1963)
• Murder Most Foul (1964)
• Saturday Night Out (1964)
• Crooks in Cloisters (1964)
• The Eyes of Annie Jones (1964)
• Flipper's New Adventure (1964)
• The Pleasure Girls (1965)
• Run with the Wind (1966)
• The Sky Pirate (1970)
• The Walking Stick (1970)
• Macbeth (1971)
• Penny Gold (1973)
• Lillie (TV serial) (1978) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lillie
• Krull (1983)
• Agatha Christie's Partners in Crime (1983)
• Dune (1984)
• Under The Cherry Moon (1986)
• El río de oro (1986)
• Onassis: The Richest Man in the World (1988)
• The Debt Collector (1999)
• Reckless (1998)
• Wives and Daughters (1999)
• Copenhagen (2002)
• Revolver (2005)
• The Libertine (2004) as Rochester's mother
• Cranford (2007) as Lady Ludlow
• Shifty (2008) as Valerie
• The Little House (2010) as Elizabeth

External links

• Francesca Annis at the Internet Movie Database