The
Best of Anna Friel
Anna Friel
plays Marcella Backland in ITV’s critically acclaimed drama series,
Marcella. Created by
Hans Rosenfeldt, writer and creator of Nordic drama The
Bridge, the series brings the
riveting world of the Scandinavian noir thriller to London’s
beating heart to create this year’s
must-see crime-thriller. The story follows Detective Inspector
Marcella, who has returned to work after the breakdown of her
marriage, investigating a case that seems disturbingly familiar and
leading her to a suspect from her past that seemingly got away. As
the case continues Marcella begins to question her own state of mind
and ability to solve the crime, after suffering from severe blackouts
and violent outbursts. As the story unfolds it appears that no one
can be trusted and everyone is brought into contention for being the
sadistic killer.
Never
backing down from a role, Anna Friel has had a career full of varied
and diverse characters, and in celebration of Marcella
arriving on DVD and digital download from 20th
June through Universal Pictures (UK), we take
a look at some of her best work to date.
Brookside
Friel’s
first major role in British TV saw her emerge as Beth Jordache in
this soap opera set in the suburbs of Liverpool. Even after all these
years and experience in the biz, this could be the role Anna is most
remembered for, especially as she made television history when she
kissed Nicola Stephenson, providing the first on-air lesbian kiss on
a British soap. During her two-year run on the show, her character
was also victim to abuse from her father and imprisoned for
conspiracy to murder him. In 1995, Friel won the National Television
Award for Most Popular Actress for
her work on the soap opera, and it was onwards and upwards from
there...
Pushing
Daisies
In Anna’s
first venture across the Atlantic (and the debut of her American
accent), Pushing Daisies
is a quirky, surreal TV series focusing on a man named Ned (Lee Pace)
who has the ability to bring dead things back to life with his touch;
be it a rotten strawberry or his childhood sweetheart, Chuck (Friel).
If Ned touches anything he has revived a second time it dies again,
this time permanently, meaning that he can never touch the love of
his life again. Chuck obviously makes this particularly hard for Ned,
acting extremely sweet and lovely through the two-season run. Racking
up 17 Emmy Award nominations (and seven wins) - Anna’s first
nomination for Best Supporting Actress - this is certainly one to
check out for followers of her diverse and impressive career.
Land of
the Lost
Another
example of Anna’s diverse range of roles is Land
of the Lost, in which she took a step into
American comedy alongside the legendary Will Ferrell and Danny
McBride. In the film, all three are sucked into a space-time vortex
and spat back through time. The band of misfits now has no weapons,
few skills and questionable smarts to survive in an alternate
universe full of marauding dinosaurs and fantastic creatures from
beyond our world. Anna plays Ferrell’s crack-smart research
assistant Holly, who eventually proclaims her love for the scientist
in the depths of the alternate dimension they find themselves in.
Admittedly the special effects could use some work, but Friel holds
her own perfectly against these two Hollywood heavyweights!
The
Saboteurs
Anna Friel’s
interest in taking on Marcella,
which draws upon the Nordic noir genre, could be linked to a role she
took in 2015 in this Norwegian World War II series about a group of
soldiers who destroyed a Nazi-controlled water plant in the mountains
of Norway. The drama was split across three different languages
including English, Norwegian and German, and Anna Friel played the
only fictitious character; Julie Smith, a British agent bombshell who
helps plan the Sabotage whilst also creating a lot of sexual
chemistry with Norwegian scientist, Leif Tronstad (Espen Klouman
Høiner). Friel’s first step into the Nordic dark arts was an
impressive one, and surely paved the way for her starring role in
Marcella.
American
Odyssey
Around the
same time as The Saboteurs’
run on British TV, Anna was also kicking ass and taking names as part
of a US Army team in Mali, who make the startling discovery that a US
corporation is supporting an Islamist terrorist group. Shortly after
this revelation is unearthed, Friel’s character Odelle Ballard’s
squadron is attacked and mostly killed by their own government in an
attempt to cover-up the findings. However Odelle survives and is
taken hostage by extremists, facing a major challenge to escape and
reveal her government’s secrets to the world. One of the most
impressive things about this performance is Anna’s faultless
American accent; you’d never have thought she was a born and bred
Northerner!
London
Boulevard
From one of
the more saucy performances in her back catalogue, Friel plays Colin
Farrell’s slightly ‘wild’ sister Briony in this sexy, stylish
gangster thriller bristling with wit and brutal intrigue. London
Boulevard stars Colin Farrell and Keira
Knightley as star-crossed lovers who run afoul of one of London's
most vicious crime bosses and have to do their best to avoid the
inevitable consequences. Friel spends most of the film drunk and
causing mischief, bringing a burst of cheekiness to the audience in
every scene, and becoming an increasing nuisance for Mr. Farrell’s
cheeky protagonist. Never shying away from an accent, it seems
Cockney is another one that she’s got in her locker!
Marcella
From the
mind of Hans Rosenfeldt, creator of the Scandi-Noir drama The
Bridge, this hit ITV drama could be one of
Friel’s most acclaimed roles yet, with her performance drawing
plaudits through the realism and raw emotion that she brings to the
title role. In her long awaited return to British TV, Friel plays a
detective who recently returned to the force, and she becomes
involved in the investigation of a serial murder case where the modus
operandi of the killer bears a striking resemblance to an unsolved
case she was previously involved in. With everyone a potential
suspect or victim,
Marcella must determine if an old hunch has come back to haunt her,
or if her own fragile state of mind is placing her in the frame. The
series takes many twists and turns and by the end of it you’ll even
be suspecting yourself as the killer, no one is free of suspicion,
even Marcella herself...
***
MARCELLA
IS AVAILABLE ON DIGITAL DOWNLOAD AND DVD FROM 20th
JUNE, 2016, FROM UNIVERSAL PICTURES (UK)
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