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Nor indeed, the Anna Friel of almost two decades ago. As a 16-year-old, she appeared in the Liverpool soap Brookside for 18 months in the early Nineties and scooped the 1995 Most Popular Actress title at the National Television Awards.

She is now 35, with a considerable body of work, including the multi-award-winning US series Pushing Daisies. But the spectre of Beth Jordache is always lurking in the wings.

“I think journalists always bring it up in case their readers don’t know who I am,” she says flatly, trying very hard to suppress the hint of a moue. “But I’d like to think that the public recognises me for some of my other work. I was in Alan Bleasdale’s GBH before I ever set foot in Brookside Close.”

If it’s any consolation, I say, her utterly gripping new ITV drama, which begins this Thursday, had me riveted and ought to jettison any memories of her as a soap starlet.

“Thank you,” she says, accepting the compliment with the sort of solemn graciousness with which the Japanese swap business cards. In Without You, Friel plays Ellie Manning, the happy wife of Hustle star Marc Warren. One evening, as she waits for him to return home from work, two policewomen come to the door. Her husband has died in a car crash. His female passenger was also killed; does she know the identity of the mystery woman?

Source: Telegraph.co.uk