[3] She first came to prominence on the London stage playing the leading role of Lyra in the National Theatre's production of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials.
[7] She was then cast in the part of Bessie Higgins in the BBC television adaptation of Elizabeth Gaskell's novel North and South in 2004, and made a guest appearance in the 2005 series of Doctor Who.
She played Esther Summerson, the central character in the 2005 BBC adaptation of Charles Dickens's Bleak House, for which she won the Best Actress BAFTA Television Award in 2006.
In the same year she was one of the five leads in I Really Hate My Job, directed by Oliver Parker and, from October 2006 to April 2007, played Sally Bowles in Bill Kenwright and Rufus Norris's West End production of Cabaret at the Lyric Theatre.
At the end of the year she played the gaoler's daughter in Lee Hall's adaptation of The Wind in the Willows,[7] a multimillion-pound production by Box TV for BBC One, and was the joint narrator (with Anton Lesser) of the CD version of Tamar, a children's book about the Second World War by Mal Peet, which was published in December 2007.
[10] In 2008 Martin starred in the BBC Two drama White Girl[7] and with Naomie Harris in Channel 4's adaptation of Poppy Shakespeare, for which she won her second Best Actress BAFTA Television Award in 2009.
[18][19] In 2019 Martin played Beelzebub, leader of the denizens of Hell, in the Amazon Prime TV serial Good Omens,[7] based on the book by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman.
[7] Created and written by Sophie Petzal, the series follows two sisters, Theresa (Anna Maxwell Martin) and Helen (Rachael Stirling), and their families as they grapple with the potential crime of their children.
In 2022 she hosted the seventh episode of the sixty-third series of Have I Got News for You alongside guest stars Chris McCausland and Steph McGovern and team captains Paul Merton and Ian Hislop.
[citation needed] In autumn 2024 Martin costarred with David Mitchell in Ludwig, a six-part BBC television detective dramedy series.