Anna Theodora Chancellor (born 27 April 1965) is an English actress who has appeared widely on television and film and in the theatre. She received a nomination for BAFTA TV Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role as Lix Storm in The Hour (2011–2012) and has twice been nominated for Olivier Awards, in 1997 for her performances in Stanley at the National Theatre and again in 2014 for Private Lives at the Gielgud Theatre. She was also nominated for an award at the Monte-Carlo TV Festival in 2007 and for one at the Broadcasting Press Guild Awards in 2013.
On television, she is also known for her roles in the ITV series Kavanagh QC (1995–1997) and Grantchester (2016); the BBC series Pride and Prejudice (1995), Tipping the Velvet (2002), Spooks (2005–2007), Pramface (2012–2014), Ordeal by Innocence (2018) and Rain Dogs (2023); the Channel 5 series Suburban Shootout (2006–2007); the Netflix series The Crown (2017); the Epix series Pennyworth (2019–2021); the BritBox series Hotel Portofino (2022) and the Amazon Prime Video series My Lady Jane (2024).
Her films include Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994), The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005) and How I Live Now (2013).
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Early life and education
Anna Theodora Chancellor was born on 27 April 1965 in Richmond, England, to publisher John Paget Chancellor and Hon. Mary Jolliffe, a daughter of Lord Hylton. Her father was the son of Sir Christopher Chancellor and Sylvia Mary Paget, a daughter of Sir Richard Paget and philanthropist Lady Muriel, daughter of Murray Finch-Hatton, 12th Earl of Winchilsea. The Chancellor family were Scottish landed gentry who had owned land at Quothquan since 1432.
Chancellor is a niece of the journalist Alexander Chancellor, a great-granddaughter of Raymond Asquith (son of the Liberal prime minister H. H. Asquith), a first cousin of both the actress Dolly Wells and the model Cecilia Chancellor, a second cousin of the actress Helena Bonham Carter. Chancellor was also the great niece of Jane Austen eight generations removed through Edward Austen Knight. Chancellor has said that she had worked hard to become an actress, and her lineage does not define who she is.
Chancellor was brought up in Somerset and educated at St Mary's School, Shaftesbury, a Roman Catholic boarding school for girls in Dorset, but left at sixteen to live in London, later describing her early years there as "quite wild".
She studied acting at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. In her early twenties she married the poet Jock Scot (1952–2016), whom she met at LAMDA, and with whom she had a daughter in 1988. She separated from Scot a few years later.
Career
Chancellor got her first acting role on television playing Mercedes Page in Jupiter Moon, a BSkyB soap, then came a commercial for Boddingtons beer and a part in the film Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994), playing Henrietta (nicknamed "Duckface") opposite Hugh Grant.
She played Julia Piper in series 1 to 3 of Kavanagh QC. She also played Caroline Bingley in the 1995 BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice.
In 1997 she was nominated for the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role for her performance in Stanley at the Royal National Theatre-Cottesloe.
She played Questular Rontok in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005). The same year, she joined the cast of BBC One television drama series Spooks as Juliet Shaw. She has also appeared in The Vice, Karaoke, Cold Lazarus, The Dreamers, Tipping the Velvet (2002), and Fortysomething, and had a leading role in the satirical black comedy Suburban Shootout.
In 2011 she took a supporting role as Lix Storm in the BBC thriller serial The Hour, for which she was nominated for the BAFTA TV Award for Best Supporting Actress at the 2012 British Academy Television Awards.
In 2014 she was nominated for the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actress for her part in Private Lives at the Gielgud Theatre.
Charity
She is a patron of the London children's charity Scene & Heard.
Personal life
Chancellor had one daughter, Poppy, with poet Jock Scot. Poppy died from leukaemia on 29 September 2023 aged 36.
Filmography
Theatre
Boston Marriage, Donmar Warehouse – March–April 2001; Donmar in the West End – November 2001–February 2002
Mammals at the Oxford Playhouse and touring – Lorna, January 2006
Never So Good, National Theatre – summer 2008
The Observer, National Theatre – spring 2009
The Last of the Duchess, Hampstead Theatre – October–November 2011
Private Lives (playing Amanda), Chichester Festival Theatre, September 2012, and the Gielgud Theatre, London (July–September 2013)
The Wolf From the Door, Royal Court Theatre, September–November 2014
The Seagull by Anton Chekhov at National Theatre – summer 2016
Audiobooks
Chancellor has played the role of Ann Smiley in BBC dramatisations of the John le Carré novels Call for the Dead, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Honourable Schoolboy and Smiley's People.
