Anna Maxwell-Martin got ‘lots of letters from paedophiles’ at start of acting career

Anna Maxwell Martin got “lots of letters from paedophiles” who mistook her for a child when she started her acting career.

The ‘Motherland’ actress, 47, kicked off her acting career in theatre aged 24 in 2001, but because of her youthful looks she said she became prey for perverts.

Anna, who has also starred in ‘Line of Duty’, told The Daily Telegraph: “You couldn’t walk into the National Theatre and be like, ‘Hi’ya? Y’alright?’ You had to be a young ingénue. I was lucky when I left drama school that I looked like an ingénue.

“I naturally fitted into that type of being blonde and small and childlike so I went straight into theatre, and I did the Donmar and I did the National (Theatre.) “I got lots of letters from paedophiles in Wandsworth prison.

“Loads of horrific letters because they thought I was an actual child. And obviously, I was not.”

Anna’s stage roles included a run from 2003 to 2004 at the National playing a 12-year-old Lyra while aged 26.

Her breakthrough TV roles included parts in the BBC’s ‘Bleak House’ adaptation from 2005 and on Channel 4’s ‘Poppy Shakespeare’.

She also played stressed mother Julia in ‘Motherland’ and DCS Patricia Carmichael in series five and six of the BBC’s ‘Line of Duty’.

Anna said her fame came after growing up in a “normal” family, with her father, who died aged 59 when she was 24, running a pharmaceutical company and her mum a housewife.

She said about her humble childhood and how her parents never tried to discourage her from acting: “As a family, we went on a coach holiday every year from Beverley to Tossa in Spain with no loos on board. We couldn’t have afforded any more than that.

“And I was this little person in a family of scientists, doing shows in working men’s clubs, singing Whitney Houston in a bikini, no props.

“Nobody in my family ever said, ‘No. Why do you want to do that? That won’t work out for you’.”