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Maxwell Martin: \u201cI never take the lift, I always take the stairs\u201dPip<\/p>\nWhen Anna Maxwell Martin was told her new series, Star City, had a no make-up policy, she was thrilled. It\u2019s set in 1970s Soviet Russia, when lipstick and mascara were considered bourgeois and vulgar and were hard to come by, and the director wanted it to look authentic. Surely most actors would be terrified at the prospect of showing their face without any warpaint? \u201cI absolutely loved it,\u201d she tells me. \u201cIt\u2019s less time in the make-up chair \u2014 that\u2019s my dream role, to just get on with it.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
The actress, 49, is not the sort of person who enjoys putting her feet up while someone powders her nose: \u201cThat side of my job is a snooze.\u201d She is too busy for that; she\u2019s fast-talking and uses the word \u201cpractical\u201d eight times during our interview.\u00a0She made her name with a Bafta-winning performance in the BBC\u2019s Bleak House in 2005 and as 12-year-old Lyra in His Dark Materials at the National Theatre (she was 26, but people believed she was a child and \u201cI got some creepy letters\u201d). Now she has become one of our most versatile, nuanced and downright hilarious actresses, withering in Line of Duty as the nightmare boss Detective Chief Superintendent Patricia Carmichael, Tiggerish in Ludwig and the star of Motherland, as the frazzled mum Julia. <\/p>\n
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When she\u2019s not acting she is campaigning for changes to the way schools treat children with special educational needs, but, she says, above all \u201cI am a mum to my two girls, that comes first. I really like being busy and doing lots of things at the same time, though.\u201d She pauses and grins. \u201cI then burn out and cry and my boyfriend says I should do less.\u201d<\/p>\n
Maxwell Martin: \u201cI never take the lift, I always take the stairs\u201dPip<\/p>\n
We have met after a photoshoot and Maxwell Martin is in high spirits, wearing long denim shorts and a sleeveless black top that shows off her impressively toned arms and a small blue tattoo of a bird (\u201cIt\u2019s very bad, I was on drugs,\u201d she says, clarifying that\u2019s a joke). \u201cPlease objectify me,\u201d she says when I admire her biceps. \u201cThere was some talk about my abs in Cannes \u2014 I was over the moon.\u201d They are there thanks to dynamic Pilates. \u201cAny other exercise is too slow for me\u2026 Something like 80 per cent of Brits have lazy glutes,\u201d she says. \u201cWhat I say to them is, look, I also have lazy glutes, but I am trying. I never take the lift, I always take the stairs.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Maxwell Martin\u2019s default mode is jaunty repartee and laughter, but in Star City she is terrifying. It\u2019s a spin-off of the Apple TV space thriller For All Mankind, and is about the Soviet Union\u2019s mission to become the first nation to put a man on the moon, showing the tangled lives of the cosmonauts, engineers and intelligence officers embedded in space race HQ. She plays Lyudmilla Raskova, the \u201cbadass\u201d head of KGB surveillance, whose sole purpose is to protect the space mission at any cost. She also has a strong fur hat game, including one that \u201cmade me look like Frank Spencer in Some Mothers Do \u2019Ave \u2019Em\u201d.<\/p>\n
Maxwell Martin, who grew up in Beverley, East Yorkshire, the daughter of two scientists, read history at Liverpool University, but didn\u2019t know about the era in Star City. \u201cI was drinking Bacardi Breezers, not studying,\u201d she says, smiling. \u201cI didn\u2019t know about that period of Russian history, I didn\u2019t know how Lyudmilla could have been a tank commander in the Second World War \u2014 they call it the Great Patriotic War in Russia \u2014 so I phoned a friend, the historian Ben Macintyre, because he knows everything, and said, talk to me about tank commanders during the Second World War! Thanks, love!\u201d<\/p>\n
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As Lyudmilla Raskova in Star Cityapple tv<\/p>\n
There are parallels between Lyudmilla and Carmichael from Line of Duty. \u201cThey are both women who have to maintain their high status at all costs. It\u2019s really fun to play a part like that. Lyudmilla wants to do her job really well and if that means shooting someone, that\u2019s what she is going to do.\u201d<\/p>\n
During filming she commuted from the set in Lithuania to see her teenage children whenever there was a gap in filming. \u201cIt\u2019s not good for the environment,\u201d she says. \u201cBeing a mum is my priority and so a lot of choosing parts comes down to how it balances with that side of my life. I\u2019ve just had four months off with them, shopping, cooking, walking the dog.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
She and her daughters live in north London and are \u201ca really good, optimistic little unit. I love having two daughters and I love how funny and tenacious they are.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The girls\u2019 father, the Notting Hill director Roger Michell, died of a heart attack in 2021, aged 65. He and Maxwell Martin met when he directed her in the 2004 film adaptation of Ian McEwan\u2019s Enduring Love. They separated in 2020 but were on good terms and went on holiday together a fortnight before he died. She has spoken about suddenly being a single mother to two girls who had just lost their father, and how while her daughters talk about their dad, many acquaintances avoided mentioning him. It wasn\u2019t her first experience of grief: her father, Ivan, died when she was 24, before any of her friends had experienced anything like that.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cGrief is grief, isn\u2019t it?\u201d she says now. Hard and horrible? \u201cExactly. I\u2019ve just got to navigate it, parenting, earning a living, doing life, helping the girls thrive as best I can. That\u2019s the focus.\u201d<\/p>\n
After Michell died she was in a play, The Constituent, at the Old Vic in London and felt adrift not being able to talk to him about it. \u201cI\u2019d always had Roger there, so that was quite a lot.\u201d Does she still wonder what he would say? \u201cNo, because what\u2019s the point? I don\u2019t talk to anyone in my head, I\u2019ve never understood that. Some people talk to the dog, don\u2019t they? Why would I talk to my dog? He\u2019s clearly not going to talk back.\u201d<\/p>\n
Refreshingly she says her industry is often good if you are a mother. \u201cI can\u2019t describe how kind some people are. On Star City I never had to creep in and say, I\u2019m sorry, this has happened. They understood my priority is my life and my family.\u201d<\/p>\n
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With Roger Michell in 2010Alamy<\/p>\n
Just before we started talking she called one of her daughters (her phone case has a cute 3D cartoon cupid on it) to say she wouldn\u2019t be picking her up. I tell her it\u2019s pick-up time at my toddler\u2019s nursery too and she says: \u201cIt\u2019s bittersweet sending your children to nursery \u2014 you want to work, but you want to be with them.\u201d Her daughters were \u201cI think retrospectively too young\u201d when she went back to work after having them. \u201cBut you are self-employed, so you are aware you shouldn\u2019t take too long off. You are on the hamster wheel. You\u2019ve got to stay on it.\u201d<\/p>\n
She adds: \u201cI bet people are telling you it gets easier being a parent. Nah, it definitely gets harder. Where are they? What are they drinking? Supporting their mental health is really important. Most of my friends left home at 15. Now we are still spoon-feeding them, putting a bib on them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Of course she is joking: she always wanted children and clearly adores her daughters. \u201cThey are ace. Who was I before I had kids? I was a pile of shit.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
As a family she, her daughters and her boyfriend, who is a camera operator, watch a lot of comedies. \u201cWe have our comfort comedies that we have watched over and over again. For the girls it\u2019s Derry Girls, Gavin and Stacey, the American Office.\u201d<\/p>\n
Motherland ticks that comfort comedy box for a lot of people and she thinks that\u2019s why it\u2019s the role she is most recognised for. \u201cComedy often makes you more approachable. If you\u2019re Julia flinging yourself about people aren\u2019t scared to approach you.\u201d <\/p>\n
Her daughters, however, say Motherland is \u201cembarrassing\u201d. \u201cJulia is a full-cringe character and I\u2019d do anything to make her even more spine-churningly cringe. The stress of parenting is huge. You could write a drama about that or you could write a comedy and they\u2019d probably be exactly the same.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
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With Diane Morgan and Paul Ready in MotherlandColin Hutton<\/p>\n