Anne-Marie Duff: I went underground to research role of miner’s wife in Husbands and Sons

The actress visited a mining museum to speak to former miners and went hundreds of feet underground to prepare for her role as Lizzie Holroyd
Mining the part: Anne-Marie Duff went down a coal pit to research the role
Robert Dex @RobDexES28 October 2015

Anne-Marie Duff took the research for her latest role to new depths — by going hundreds of feet underground in a coal mine.

The actress, currently in cinemas alongside Carey Mulligan in the film Suffragette, plays miner’s wife Lizzie Holroyd in Husbands And Sons at the National Theatre.

The play is an amalgamation of three D H Lawrence works inspired by his early years growing up as a miner’s son in Eastwood in the Nottinghamshire coalfield, and tells the stories of three separate families in a small village.

Duff, 45, and other cast members, including Sherlock star Louise Brealey, visited a mining museum to speak to former miners and went underground — an experience Duff described as “extraordinary”.

She told the Standard: “It’s good to have the knowledge about what would concern your domestic life.

“We went down into the mine and it is extraordinary what it does to you, the conditions men were working in right up until the mines were closed.

“They would be 450ft below ground in a space not much bigger than a coffin. It was just like nothing else you’ve experienced because it goes against nature to be so far below the earth.

“You see what it does to those men and how it bonds them because it’s a totally unique experience, it’s all about life and death”.

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The play is set in 1912 — the same year that much of the action in Suffragette takes place — but Duff says the character of Lizzie is very different to Violet, the put-upon laundry worker and militant suffragette she played in the film.

She said: “They both have violent husbands but they are very different creatures.

“Violet is from London and Lizzie is from this small village near Nottingham. Violet is politicised and Lizzie isn’t — Violet is working to find some power whereas Lizzie is drowning a bit and is trying to stay afloat through it all.”

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