Francesca Annis
| Francesca Annis | |
|---|---|
Francesca Annis in trailer for Flipper's New Adventure (1964)
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| Born |
14 May 1945 Kensington, London, England |
| Occupation | Actress |
| Years active | 1959–present |
| Partner(s) | Patrick Wiseman (1976–1990s) Ralph Fiennes (1995–2006) |
| Children | Charlotte Wiseman Taran Wiseman Andreas Wiseman |
Francesca Annis (born 14 May 1945) is an English actress. She is known for television roles in Reckless (1998), Wives and Daughters (1999), Deceit (2000) and Cranford (2007). A six-time BAFTA TV Award nominee, she won the 1979 BAFTA TV Award for Best Actress for the ITV serial Lillie. Her film appearances include Krull (1983), Dune (1984), The Debt Collector (1999) and The Libertine (2004).
Annis was born in Kensington, London in 1945 to an English father, Lester William Anthony Annis (1914–2001) and a Brazilian-French mother, actress Mariquita (Mara) Purcell (1913–2009), both sometime actors and Mara, a singer. Mara was from a wealthy Brazilian family, and the Annises moved to Brazil when Francesca was a year old, and spent six years there, returning to England when she was 7. In recollecting the years in Brazil, she describes her parents as running "a nightclub on Copacabana beach," and her mother Mara "performing as a blues singer."
At the same time, Francesca was educated at a convent school, and trained in her early years as a ballet dancer, with training in the Russian style at the Corona Stage Academy. Her career break came in acting, when at age 16 she landed a role alongside Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor in Cleopatra, which appeared in 1963.
Annis began acting professionally in her teens, and made her film debut in The Cat Gang (1959). Her first major film role was as Elizabeth Taylor's handmaiden in Cleopatra (1963), which she was cast in while still studying Russian ballet. Her big break was as one of the leads in the 1965 West End stage musical Passion Flower Hotel. She played Estella in a television adaptation of Great Expectations (1967) and presented children's television programmes. She garnered attention for her performance as Lady Macbeth in Roman Polanski's film version of Macbeth (1971) in which she performs the sleepwalking soliloquy in the nude. The critic Kenneth Tynan was present when the scene was shot:
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