Anna Friel says she has begun therapy – after lockdown made her analyse her life for the first time.
Actor Anna, star of hit ITV series Marcella as well as other stage and screen success, tells the secrets of her success in a revealing new interview.
But she also told how she has questioned her work life balance and now goes to therapy for the first time in her life as well.
She explained: “You’re so driven by your work and you realise, particularly with this lockdown for me, it’s the first time I’ve ever stopped for this long and really resetting and re-evaluating what’s been my driving force.
“Have I given as much to my relationship as I have my work. I know I have(given as much) with my child, because she’s always been there.
“They do need work and time, just as much as your job does.
“Maybe on the second one [lockdown] I’ve started to get a little bit itchy feet and thought, ‘Oh God, it’s groundhog day, it’s the same, it’s the same,’ but you know people are suffering so much more.
“I started to meditate, and I’d never had therapy in my life until about eight weeks ago for the very first time.
“She couldn’t believe it. She said, ‘You’re a child actress and it’s the first time you’ve had therapy at 44 years old?’ ‘Yep, I think I’m thinking too much. I’m overthinking everything.’
“I think I was scared to stop and I wasn’t really dealing with things. I’d be subconsciously pushing them somewhere and letting them come up ready for the next character and thinking, ‘You have to be in a certain mindset,
otherwise I won’t be able to do it.’
“If 30 years in I haven’t learned my craft, there’s something quite wrong.
It’s more about balance and shifts.”
Anna also admitted one of her unusual on-set habits now is push ups and exercise before scenes to tire her arms out after thinking they look odd and like they are “flying” in her early work.
Speaking to David Morrissey on his Who Am I This Time? Podcast, she said her previous partner of nine years David Thewlis had first spotted her unusual arm movements and made her change things for future roles.
Anna said: “I’m really physical on set. It’d be bugbear of mine, sometimes I’m a little bit OCD and I can see a director has just said ‘and action’ and you know their [her character’s] heart rate isn’t right, or they might not be flushed enough.
“I always say, ‘Give me two or three minutes,’ and I’m doing press ups or I’m jumping up and down, I’m really, really physical.
“I also exhaust my arms. It was pointed out to me by two ex boyfriends, who both happen to be actors, but particularly David (Thewlis, long term ex partner).
“He said, ‘What is it with you and your arms?’ No one had ever pointed that out to me. It’s so simple. If I go back, which none of us ever want to do, I just go, ‘Oh my God, it’s so bad.’ My arms look like they’re flying.
“The only way around that was to do so many press ups, as many as my little body could carry, so they were so tired they would limp. That would do something different as it would change the place of where the voice comes from and how the shoulders sound and I started to work out how all of those things worked hand-in-hand beautifully, symbiotically.”
Anna, who began her career in soap Brookside and also excelled in dramas The Street and Pushing Daisies, told how she creates emotional books which help her to cry in scenes and also makes playlists of the sort of music she thinks her characters would listen to, as she tries to get inside their heads and become them on screen.
She said: “I’m training now ready for my next role and the playlist is nothing I would listen to, it’s quite heavy metal, which actually annoys me. But she’s a bit erratic and tougher.”
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