The star of Channel 4’s Shameless spoke out about her experiences in the wake of the Me Too scandal gripping Hollywood.
Film producer Harvey Weinstein is among a number of top entertainment figures accused of rape and sexual assault.
Anne-Marie, 47, said she was shocked to discover she was not alone and had often blamed herself for what happened. “I have had quite a few experiences in my early career that would curl your toes,” she told BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs.
“What’s been extraordinary is this realisation that it wasn’t just you, because often you think, ‘Oh God, was it me? Did I do something? Was I complicit in some way?’
“We have been talking about them now, myself and colleagues, and we hadn’t spoken out before.”
She added: “I think it’s important that the glamorous multi-millionaires are speaking up. That has a huge ripple effect.
“Because if they, the people who other people see as having everything, have been through things, it makes others feel capable of speaking up themselves.”
Reflecting on her successful acting career, Anne-Marie, who also starred in the films Enigma and Notes On A Scandal, revealed that her drama teachers told her she would never make a leading lady.
“I was only ever playing small parts,” she said. “I went to a drama school where you were given a term’s notice if you were going to be asked to leave at the end of term. I was always on a term’s warning.
“I found it very difficult to get into drama school. I did not get in the first time round. I reached a crossroads and I thought maybe I will be a singer. My singing teacher just looked at me and said, ‘I think you have the soul of an actor’.”
Anne-Marie was married to her Shameless co-star James McAvoy for 10 years until they split up in 2016.
They have an eight-year-old son, Brendan. Speaking of the break-up, she said: “This sounds ironic 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.”
She chose to take to the desert island The Mill On The Floss by George Eliot and some beautiful underwear was chosen as her luxury item.
Among her record choices were Love Letter by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Ball And Biscuit by The White Stripes and Dat by Pluto Shervington.
