Produced by Parallel Films for BBC NI, Anne-Marie Duff won for her role as Theresa in 'Sinners', in an award ceremony in Monte Carlo on Sunday evening, 7 July.
Although Anne Marie was born and raised in London, both her parents are Irish and she has coincidentally found herself working on Irish stories with some regularity. She worked previously with some of the cast, the producer and executive producers of Sinners on the BBC Northern Ireland production Amongst Women, and with director Aisling Walsh on Trial and Retribution in 1997. Other credits include Enigma and Aristocrats.
Says Anne Marie: "Theresa is a country girl who has been recently orphaned and finds herself pregnant. She's very naïve and all of a sudden finds herself in a Kafkaesque nightmare where she loses complete control of her life. "It's really a story about someone becoming institutionalised and what happens to them in that situation; whether they rebel against it or go along with it. It's a fascinating story, almost like a Greek tragedy, but because the circumstances are true - you have an even greater sense of responsibility to tell it well."
"Theresa is incarcerated because of her pregnancy - the life inside her takes away her own and so for the first half of the film she's completely in denial about that. But once she has the baby - which she sees as a really beautiful thing - she gets a sense of perspective. It completely changes her attitude and she believes instinctively that this is not a bad or evil thing but good and it opens up her mind."
"She becomes a real negotiator then - her mind is opened up to compromise because she knows she cannot continue working inside the laundry. She clings to a sense of what is right, she won't buy into the values of the nuns because she cannot believe that the baby is bad."
Anne Marie recently completed another film set in a Magdalen laundry (directed by Peter Mullen). "So I've spent about six months in a rather grim world. But I think all the research and immersion I did for that project has allowed me to go even deeper into the role of Theresa on this one; to really explore the psychological aspect of the character, especially in relation to her motherhood.
"I think people will be quite shocked and surprised by the film. I suppose what strikes me is this the struggle against human nature in a country that's so bound to the earth."
Interview with Anne-Marie Duff from the BBC NI Drama website www.bbc.co.uk/northernireland/drama
