‘The flaws are the sexy bits’: Anne-Marie Duff on courage, curiosity and the rare gifts of ageing

Few actors inhabit a character as fully as Anne-Marie Duff, whether it’s Elizabeth I or Lady Macbeth. As the second season of Bad Sisters arrives on our screens, she talks to Eva Wiseman

Anne-Marie Duff was out for a walk on London’s Hampstead Heath, drinking an oat-milk latte (“Because I’m an actress!”) when suddenly she was surrounded by a group of men. They were red-faced runners in Lycra, “very affluent, very sophisticated middle-aged guys, and they stopped me on the path.” She was startled. Yes, she’s famous, having been familiar to British viewers ever since her breakthrough in Paul Abbott’s Shameless 20 years ago, but even so, hers has never been the “stop you for an autograph” kind of fame, more the discerning nod, the briefly clasped “thank you” hands. They wanted to talk to her, they said, “to ask what I thought about a friend of theirs. They were worried.”

Duff quickly understood. The men had seen the multi-award winning black comedy Bad Sisters, in which Duff’s character, Grace, is a victim of coercive abuse by “the Prick”, her husband, whose death haunts the series. Duff has explored abuse on screen before – she’s worked with Women’s Aid and played a woman escaping violence in Born Equal – but this is the first time, she says, that the work has resonated not just with women, but men, too. Posh men. “Men who were sweating all over me.” They gave examples of their friend’s abusive behaviour to his partner, “and I said, ‘Yeah, to be honest, that doesn’t sound great.’” She gave them some advice and suggested they encourage their wives to support their friend’s wife and went on her way. “Actually I felt sort of flattered, you know? Because it’s like, we nailed it. We did it properly.”