Francesca Annis Biography

Francesca Annis is a veteran actress from England. Over the course of her six-decade-long career, she has accumulated over a hundred film and TV credits. She has also been prominently active on stage and has portrayed various roles in plays by the likes of William Shakespeare, John Osbourne, and Ivan Turgenev. A native of London, Annis hails from a family of actors and singers. She started acting when she was still a teenager. In 1959, she made her big screen debut in the family crime film ‘The Cat Gang’. Her other memorable cinematic performances came in films like ‘Cleopatra’, ‘The Sky Pirate’, ‘Macbeth’, ‘Under the Cherry Moon’, ‘Dune’, ‘The Debt Collector’, and ‘King of Thieves’. Annis is predominantly known for the undeniable impression her body of work has made on British television. Nominated six times, she won the BAFTA TV Award in 1979 in the Best Actress category for her outing as the titular character in the ITV serial ‘Lillie’. She has also portrayed Anna Fairley in ITV’s ‘Reckless’, Mrs Gibson in BBC’s ‘Wives and Daughters’, Ellen Richmond in BBC One’s ‘Deceit’, and Lady Ludlow in BBC One’s ‘Cranford’.