[2] In recollecting the years in Brazil, she described her parents as running "a nightclub on Copacabana beach", and her mother Mara "performing as a blues singer".

[7][8] She appeared as Tuppence with James Warwick as Tommy Beresford in the pilot film The Secret Adversary (1983)[9] and the subsequent TV series, Agatha Christie's Partners in Crime (1983–84).

[12] At the National Theatre in 1981, she played Natalya Petrovna in Peter Gill's production of Ivan Turgenev's A Month in the Country.

At the Comedy Theatre between September 2005 and January 2006, Annis starred as Ruth in Epitaph for George Dillon with Joseph Fiennes.

Annis co-starred with Sir Michael Gambon and Dame Judi Dench as Lady Ludlow (an aristocrat opposed to the education of the lower classes) in the BBC1 costume-drama series Cranford (2007).

[citation needed] Annis was in a relationship with photographer Patrick Wiseman that began in 1974, raising three children, Charlotte, Taran, and Andreas.

[2] Annis and Fiennes announced their separation on 7 February 2006, after 11 years together, in a parting described as "acrimonious," following rumours that he had had an affair with the Romanian singer Cornelia Crisan.