Anne-Marie Duff has spoken of the emotional impact of the end of her decade-long marriage to the Scottish actor James McAvoy in her appearance on Desert Island Discs.
In the interview to be broadcast on Radio 4 on Sunday, the leading stage and screen actor admits she has “been through a lot, certainly, in the last few years” after the marriage ended in 2016.
“I’m really interested in several things,” Duff said. “One is the fact that we as a species get our faces out of the dirt and try to feel the sun on them, and as a person I try to do that.”
She goes on to tell presenter Kirsty Young: “I go, OK, this is awful, I feel like I may die. However, I won’t, because there is more of me than I ever imagined there could be ... What are you going to do? Get your face out of the dirt and try to feel the sun on it.”
Duff, who shot to fame in the Channel 4 drama Shameless, declares that she refuses to believe “that there is a scarcity of love”, and picks a song called Love Letter, by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, as one of her stipulated eight tracks.
She explains the song is “about that tipping point at which you fear you may lose love”.
The closeness at the end of a relationship is unique, Duff believes. “This sounds ironic of course, but sometimes in a marriage you are never closer than the moment at which the two of you decide it’s time to finish.
“There is such pure intimacy in that moment and honesty and truth and kindness in all its many versions. So I suppose I picked this song because it tells me, ‘Yeah, I can love and I can hurt. But I can love again.’”
Duff also chooses Elvis Costello’s song Alison in memory of a late friend. “Grief is an interesting thing,” she says. “It comes when it wants. Gentle grieving of her is something I just carry with me.”
Young asks the actor about the moment when, at the age of 25, she walked off the stage at the New Ambassadors Theatre in the middle of a performance as Nora in Ibsen’s play A Doll’s House. Her co-star, Paterson Joseph, had to persuade her back out in front of the audience.
“I had proper stage fright,” Duff reveals. “I became very aware I was unhealthily pushing myself into the character’s noggin.”
Duff chooses fine lingerie as her one sanctioned luxury for her desert island stay.