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Move over, The Sixth Commandment and The Long Shadow: Britain has a new true crime obsession.
ITV’s new series, Until I Kill You, tells the real-life story of Delia Balmer, a woman who strikes up a relationship with John Sweeney. The only problem? Sweeney is a murderer, and soon Balmer finds her own life in danger.
The show is based on her memoir, Living With A Serial Killer. So who is the actress that plays her, Anna Maxwell Martin? Here’s what to know.
Early life
Martin was born in Beverley, East Yorkshire, in 1977. Her parents were scientists – her father was the managing director of a pharmaceutical company, while her mother was a researcher.
“My parents had no idea where I came from, but they let me get on with it,” Martin told the Mail on Sunday. “I’d dress up in little outfits and I’d get to sing solos. I remember dressing as a pearly queen for one performance, but Whitney [Houston] was my idol.”
As a child, she said, she was also “a bit strung out. I used to get completely hyperactive and then completely depressed. I’m much more level now”.
Nevertheless, by the time she was 11, she’d decided that she was going to go into acting. A spell at Liverpool University, then LAMDA followed. When the time came to join Equity, Martin added Maxwell to her name to distinguish her from another Anna Martin.
Career
Success quickly followed for Martin. She made her debut in 2001 at the Donmar Warehouse in a production of The Little Foxes. By 2004 she was getting rave reviews for playing Lyra in the National Theatre’s production of His Dark Materials; the only show her father saw before he died.
She was aged 24 at the time. "When it happened to me when I was 24, I was very lonely," she later told BBC Women’s Hour. "I was very isolated because no one I knew had been through it what I'd been through - I didn't know those people.”
Despite the tragedy, her work saw her nominated for her first Olivier, and then two BAFTAs (which she won) for her work in Bleak House and Poppy Shakespeare.
As Martin’s career blossomed, so did her private life: she fell in love with director Roger Michell. 21 years older than her, Michell had been married previously and had two children.
“When I met him he felt like my person,” Martin later joked. “I groomed him to fall in love with me.” The pair married and had two daughters together – Maggie and Nancy – before separating in 2020.
“I haven’t really spoken about it because it isn’t fair on all the people involved,” she said when it happened. “There are four children to think about. It’s taken an enormous amount of time, but we are all getting through it in a healthy way… you get on with life. We talk all the time.”
Though success in America never quite happened, Martin forged a reputation in the UK for being a high quality actress. In 2016, she appeared in the award-winning comedy Motherland – her first comedy – which was followed by a stint as the loathed Patricia Carmichael in Line of Duty.
At the time, series creator Jed Mercurio gushed that he was “delighted and flattered that an actor of Anna Maxwell Martin’s status agreed to play this pivotal role”.
Despite that success, Martin has remained down to earth. “I don’t get offended if someone comes up to me in Waitrose – for some reason, it’s Waitrose in particular – and says: ‘Oh, I saw you in Cabaret. I hated it. You weren’t very good,’” she told the Observer.
Recent life
In recent years, Martin has appeared in shows from David Mitchell’s comedy Ludwig (which aired in September) to Prime Video show Good Omens.
In 2021, she also had to deal with the death of her ex-husband Michell, aged 65, a year after the pair separated. Speaking on Women’s Hour, Martin described the “financial terror” she felt for herself and her daughters as a result.
"My husband died three years ago and things were really difficult on every aspect of our lives,” she said. “One of those was that there's a lot of stuff that comes with grief, and one of them is financial terror. And then there are real practicalities around your children and their mental health, and supporting them, which is your priority."
"It was horrible to have to see my children walk that road. But I’m pretty gritty and pretty strong, and I think I’m quite deft, I hope, at navigating life. I thought, 'I’ve just got to keep the motor chugging on'."
Next up
In September, the BBC announced that Martin would star opposite Anna Friel in a 90-minute drama from Jimmy McGovern, the creator of the acclaimed prison show Time. It is unclear when the as-yet untitled new drama is to air.
