Anna MasseyFilmography

The Oxford Murders

Actors: Elijah Wood, John Hurt, Leonor Watling, Julie Cox, Jim Carter

Synopsis: A young Argentine mathematician visiting the United Kingdom is drawn into a complex murder mystery when his landlady is brutally slain in director Alex de la Iglesia's tense and stylish thriller. John Hurt stars in a film scripted by longtime de la Iglesia collaborator Jorge Guerricaechevarría. Read More

Tess of the d'Urbervilles

Actors: Gemma Arterton, Hans Matheson, Eddie Redmayne

Synopsis: Author Thomas Hardy's infamous novel is translated to the screen courtesy of director David Blair, who relocates the timeless tale of greed and deception to a modern setting. Driven by poverty to claim kinship with the wealthy D'Urbervilles, beautiful innocent Tess Durbeyfield finds her ruse Read More

The Gigolos

Actors: Sacha Tarter, Trevor Sather, Susannah York, Sian Phillips, Angela Pleasence

Synopsis: Per its title, director Richard Bracewell's low-key, über-British dramedy The Gigolos concerns itself with two male employees of a London-based escort service for women. The picture, however, places far greater emphasis on investigating the relationship between the men per se than it does Read More

Oliver Twist

Actors: Timothy Spall, William Miller, Adam Arnold, Tom Hardy, Sophie Okonedo

Synopsis: As directed by Coky Giedroyc and originally screened on the BBC, this epic adaptation of Charles Dickens' second novel, the classic 1838 tome Oliver Twist, checks in at just under three hours. In the principal roles, it stars William Miller as Oliver, Timothy Spall (Intimacy) as Fagin, Adam Arnold Read More

Pinochet's Last Stand

Actors: Derek Jacobi, Peter Capaldi, Phyllida Law, Jessica Stevenson

Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont

Actors: Joan Plowright, Rupert Friend, Zoe Tapper, Anna Massey, Robert Lang

Synopsis: An elderly widow and a young would-be author strike up an unlikely friendship in this comedy drama. Mrs. Palfrey (Joan Plowright) has been uneasy since the death of her husband, and she decides to move from her long-time home in Scotland to London so she can be closer to her grandson Desmond (Lorcan O'Toole Read More

The Machinist

Actors: Christian Bale, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Aitana Sanchez-Gijon, John Sharian, Michael Ironside

Synopsis: Brad Anderson directs the psychological thriller The Machinist, a production of Spain's Filmax company. Christian Bale plays Trevor Reznik, a factory lathe operator who has developed a serious case of insomnia. Lack of sleep has already started to wear down on his brain and his body. When he's Read More

He Knew He Was Right

Actors: Bill Nighy, Laura Fraser, Oliver Dimsdale, Christina Cole, Stephen Campbell Moore

Synopsis: When Louis and Emily Trevalyan exchanged wedding vows on a day that seemed to mark the beginning of a blissful union, little could they foresee the trials that would face them in their first year of marriage. As Anthony Trollepe slowly peels away the layers of Victorian propriety, a variety of Read More

Agatha Christie: A Life in Pictures

Actors: Olivia Williams, Anna Massey, Raymond Coulthard, Anthony O'Donnell

Possession

Actors: Gwyneth Paltrow, Aaron Eckhart, Jennifer Ehle, Jeremy Northam, Lena Headey

Synopsis: In Neil LaBute's film adaptation of A.S. Byatt's Booker Prize-winning 1990 novel, Aaron Eckhart (who has starred in all of LaBute's films) plays Roland Michell, an American academic researcher, working in London, who discovers some important letters written by a famous Victorian poet, Randolph Read More

The Importance of Being Earnest

Actors: Rupert Everett, Colin Firth, Frances O'Connor, Reese Witherspoon, Judi Dench

Synopsis: A superb cast brings Oscar Wilde's classic comedy of manners to life in the third big-screen adaptation of this hilarious look at fun, games, and dubious ethics among the British upper crust. Algernon Moncrieff (Rupert Everett) is a slightly shady, but charming gentlemen from a wealthy family who Read More

An Angel For May

Actors: Matthew Beard, Tom Wilkinson, Charlotte Wakefield, Angeline Ball, Hugo Speer

Synopsis: Directed by Harley Cokliss, An Angel for May follows a modern boy (Matthew Beard) living in Yorkshire, England, and his dog, who cross through a brick wall leading directly into the early 1940's. Tom (Beard) looks very strange to Sam Wheeler (Tom Wilkinson), who owns the property which Tom managed Read More

Dark Blue World

Actors: Krystof Hádek, Ondrej Vetchý, Tara Fitzgerald, Oldrich Kaiser, Charles Dance

Synopsis: The friendship of two men is tested by war, political upheaval, and romantic rivalry in this drama from Czech filmmaker Jan Sverak, whose Kolya became an international success. Lt. Franta Slama (Ondrej Vetchy) is a top pilot in the Czech Air Force who is assigned to train a promising young flier Read More

Room To Rent

Actors: Saïd Taghmaoui, Juliette Lewis, Rupert Graves, Anna Massey, Clémentine Célarié

Synopsis: One man's pursuit of life, liberty, and a green card sets the stage for this comedy-drama. Ali (Said Taghmaoui) was born in Egypt but has come to England in hopes of finding his fortune. Nothing if not industrious, Ali juggles several low-paying jobs: He works in a Middle Eastern restaurant Read More

Mad Cows

Actors: Anna Friel, Joanna Lumley, Anna Massey, Phyllida Law, Greg Wise

Synopsis: Mad Cows is a slapstick comedy about sex and the singles scene. Single and confused Maddy has just had a baby. The first day that she goes out with her baby, she gets arrested at Harrods for shoplifting. While in detention at the Holloway Prison's Mother and Baby Unit, she smuggles Jack out in her Read More

Respectable Trade

Synopsis: Based on the novel by Philippa Gregory, the British miniseries A Respectable Trade was what is known in the business as a "bodice ripper." The story began in 1788, when well-bred governess Frances Scott (Emma Fielding) married her rough-hewn employer Josiah Cole (Warren Clarke). It didn't take Read More

Driftwood

Actors: James Spader, Anne Brochet, Barry McGovern

Synopsis: A woman who skirts the edges of madness finds love, but under deceptive circumstances, in this drama from Ireland. Sarah (Anne Brochet) is a lonely sculptor who lives near the Irish seacoast. One day, while walking along a desolate beach, she discovers a man who has washed up on the shore (James Spader Read More

The Slab Boys

Synopsis: Screenwriter and director John Byrne transformed his own 1983 off-Broadway play into this coming-of-age comedy-drama that is divided into six segments, each one a different day during one week in the lives of its main characters. Spanky Farrell (Russell Barr), Hector McKenzie (Bill Gardiner), and Read More

Sweet Angel Mine

Synopsis: Set in the wild forests of Nova Scotia, this Canadian psychodrama deals with the tragic travails of a young Englishman who has come there to find his long-lost father. But instead of a family reunion, he ends up entangled with a beautiful young girl and her mother after the girl sees him bathing Read More

The Grotesque

Actors: Alan Bates, Theresa Russell, Sting

Synopsis: The Grotesque (aka Grave Indiscretion, aka Gentleman Don't Eat Poets) is a very black, very British comedy that puts an unusual and perversely entertaining spin on the classic tea-cup-and-intrigue mystery. Sir Hugo Coal (Alan Bates) is a grumpy, eccentric English gentleman (and Read More

Angels & Insects

Actors: Mark Rylance, Kristin Scott Thomas, Patsy Kensit, Jeremy Kemp, Douglas Henshall

Synopsis: A 19th-century British naturalist falls in love with the beautiful daughter of a wealthy aristocrat, but he soon discovers that her family's perfect facade disguises unexpectedly grim secrets. Director and co-screenwriter Philip Haas's adaptation of A.S. Byatt's Morpho Eugenio eschews the usual Read More

Haunted

Actors: Aidan Quinn, Kate Beckinsale, Anthony Andrews, John Gielgud, Anna Massey

Synopsis: Adapted from the novel by James Herbert, this subtle, melancholy British chiller owes a great deal to Henry James's The Turn of the Screw. The story opens with a chilling prologue in 1905 England, in which a young boy fails to prevent the accidental drowning of his sister. As a young man, David (Aidan Quinn Read More

The War Within: A Portrait of Virginia Woolf

Synopsis: Narrated by Ian Redford, this award-winning documentary profiles the modernist British author, essayist, and critic Virginia Woolf, whose best-known works include the novels Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, and Orlando: a Biography, as well as the essay A Room of One's Own. The program features Read More

Impromptu

Actors: Judy Davis, Hugh Grant, Mandy Patinkin, Bernadette Peters, Julian Sands

Synopsis: Amandine Aurore Lucie Dupin, better known in the literary world as George Sand, not only took a man's name, but trotted around wearing pants and smoking cigars in public. No great shakes today, but in the 1800s she was perhaps the most famous (or infamous) woman in the world. One of the first Read More

The Tall Guy

Actors: Jeff Goldblum, Emma Thompson, Rowan Atkinson, Emil Wolk, Geraldine James

Synopsis: Dexter King (Jeff Goldblum) is an actor who spends his nights on-stage in London's West End as a comedic punching bag for obnoxiously self-centered comedian Ron Anderson (Rowan Atkinson). He gets hit in the head with hammers, he trips, and he stands by dumbly as Anderson gets all the laughs. His Read More

Mountains of the Moon

Actors: Patrick Bergin, Iain Glen, Richard E. Grant, Fiona Shaw, Peter Vaughan, John Savident

Synopsis: Director Bob Rafelson fulfilled a lifelong dream when he finally received backing to complete Mountains of the Moon. The film recreates the exploratory adventures of 19th century visionaries Sir Richard Burton (Patrick Bergin) and John Henning Speke (Iain Glen). The heart of the film is the effort Read More

The Christmas Tree

A Tale of Two Cities

Synopsis: The fourth presentation of Masterpiece Theatre's 1989-90 season, a four-part adaptation of Dickens' Tale of Two Cities, was so lavish an undertaking (especially for TV) that it ended up a Production of Two Cities. Part of the program was taped at London's Granada studios, while the remaining Read More

The Man from the Pru

Actors: Jonathan Pryce, Anna Massey, Susannah York

Synopsis: In this fact-based drama, a British man accused of his wife's murder becomes the target of his friends' and neighbors' wrath. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

Killing Dad

Actors: Denholm Elliott, Julie Walters, Richard E. Grant, Anna Massey, Laura del Sol

Synopsis: When a father attempts to return to his abandoned family after 23 years his grown son tries to murder his drunk, unemployed father. ~ All Movie Guide Read More

La Couleur Du Vent

Actors: Elizabeth Bourgine, Philippe Léotard, Fabrice Luchini, Jean-Pierre Léaud, Jean-Pierre Bisson

Synopsis: Louise (Elizabeth Bourgine) is a young woman working at a publishing house who develops an unusual affection for submitted manuscript. She breaks up with Serge (Philippe Leotard), the printer who loves her. Louise tells the heartbroken Serge she has fallen in love with the author whom she has Read More

Tears in the Rain

Actors: Sharon Stone, Christopher Cazenove, Leigh Lawson, Anna Massey, Maurice Denham

Synopsis: The romantic melodrama tells the story of an American beauty who romantic journeys to England in obedience to her late mother's last request. There she encounters the son of her mother's former beau and romantic sparks fly. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

Day After the Fair

Actors: Sammi Davis, Hannah Gordon

Synopsis: Day After the Fair is a two-part TV adaptation of Thomas Hardy's On the Western Circuit. The unhappy wife (Hannah Gordon) of a brewery owner takes pity on a lonely, pregnant serving girl (Sammi Davis). The illiterate servant prevails upon her protector to write a letter to the London man (Martyn Read More

A Hazard of Hearts

Actors: Marcus Gilbert, Diana Rigg, Helena Bonham Carter

Synopsis: Hazard of Hearts was adapted for television from a 1948 bodice-ripper by Barbara Cartland. Set (where else?) in 1810 England, the film stars Helena Bonham Carter as the obligatory innocent young lass with a dynamite figure. Falling in love with a Rochester-like Marquis (Marcus Gilbert), Helena is Read More

Foreign Body

Actors: Victor Banerjee, Warren Mitchell, Geraldine McEwan, Denis Quilley, Amanda Donohoe

Synopsis: Victor Banerjee, the India-born star of David Lean's A Passage to India, is the central figure of director Ronald L. Neame's Foreign Body. Jobless in Calcutta, Banerjee steals money from his own father to afford passage to Britain. There he makes contact with his cousin Warren Mitchell, who Read More

Hotel Du Lac

Synopsis: This made-for-TV adaptation of Anita Brookner's novel is an account of a novelist, still smarting from a failed relationship, who finds refuge at a Swiss lakefront resort. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Movie Guide Read More

The McGuffin

Actors: Charles Dance, Brian Glover, Ritza Brown, Francis Matthews, Phyllis Logan

Synopsis: In this standard suspense thriller, Paul Hatcher (Charles Dance) has a habit of spying on the neighbors across the way, something that gets him into deep trouble. Hatcher is a movie critic, and for awhile it looks like his main problem is keeping reality and the silver screen separate. But then a Read More

Anna Karenina

Actors: Jacqueline Bisset, Christopher Reeve, Paul Scofield

Synopsis: The best-known of the 12 filmed adaptations of Tolstoy's Anna Karenina include the 1936 Garbo vehicle and the 1947 Vivien Leigh vehicle. This made-for-TV version is every bit as elaborate and tasteful as those earlier efforts. Jacqueline Bisset makes her TV-movie debut as Anna, the wife of 19th Read More

The Chain

Actors: Herbert Norville, Denis Lawson, Rita Wolf, Maurice Denham, Nigel Hawthorne, Billie Whitelaw, Leo McKern, Warren Mitchell, David Troughton, Phyllis Logan

Synopsis: The Chain is linked by a series of moves. As one couple moves out of their current residence to live in posher quarters, another moves in, and so it goes all the way up to the lavish mansioned owned by self-made millionaire Leo McKern. The cycle starts all over again when McKern, wishing to be Read More

The Little Drummer Girl

Actors: Diane Keaton, Yorgo Voyagis, Klaus Kinski, Sami Frey, Michael Cristofer

Synopsis: Based on John Le Carré's novel by the same name, this story about Charlie (Diane Keaton) a female double agent working between the Palestinians and Israelis, loses some of the excitement and in-depth characterization engendered by the long novel -- mainly because the novel is hard to capture in a Read More

Sacred Hearts

Actors: Anna Massey, Katrin Cartlidge, Fiona Shaw, Anne Dyson

Synopsis: Sacred Hearts in one of the more trenchant of the "nun- bashing" films of the 1980s. Anna Massey plays the unbalanced Mother Superior in charge of a British convent during the war years. Through the rigid enforcement of her Spartanlike rules, Sister Massey puts her fellow nuns through the torments Read More

Another Country

Actors: Rupert Everett, Colin Firth, Michael Jenn, Frederick Alexander, Philip Dupuy, Robert Addie, Rupert Wainwright, Crispin Redman

Synopsis: A pair of British lads, one gay and one socialist, chafe at the restrictions of boarding school life in this period piece, which was adapted from Julian Mitchell's novel and play of the same name and loosely based on the Burgess-Maclean spy scandal of the 1950s. In the 1930s, upper-class scions Read More

Sakharov

Actors: Jason Robards, Jr., Glenda Jackson, Nicol Williamson, Frank Finlay, Marion Bailey

Synopsis: The made-for-TV Sakharov stars Jason Robards as famed Soviet nuclear physicist D. Andrei Sakharov. Lauded by his government for his scientific achievements, Sakharov nonetheless becomes an outspoken critic of Russia's human rights violations. He is reclassified as a "non-person" and exiled to the Read More

Mansfield Park

Actors: Sylvestra Le Touzel, Bernard Hepton, Nicholas Farrell

Synopsis: Adapted from the novel by Jane Austen, the British miniseries Mansfield Park starred Sylvestra La Touzel as Fanny Price, a "poor relation" deposited at the doorstep of the titular country estate at age ten. Raised by her cynical uncle, Sir Thomas Bertram (Bernard Hepton), the ugly-duckling Fanny Read More

Five Days One Summer

Actors: Sean Connery, Betsy Brantley, Lambert Wilson, Jennifer Hilary, Isabel Dean

Synopsis: Fred Zinnemann's final film is a meditative examination of an illicit May-December romance, set in the mountain expanse of the Swiss Alps. Sean Connery plays Douglas, a middle-aged Scottish doctor on vacation in the Alps in 1932 with a beautiful and fresh-faced young woman, Kate (Betsy Brantley) Read More

I Remember Nelson

Actors: Kenneth Colley, Geraldine James, Tim Pigott-Smith

Synopsis: Kenneth Colley stars in this four-part miniseries (originally produced for British television) which dramatizes the life and adventures of England's best-known naval officer, Lord Horatio Nelson. I Remember Nelson chronicles the great man's life by telling his story as seen by several people who Read More

Virginia Fly is Drowning

Synopsis: A single woman still living with her boring parents secretly dreams of sexual passion in this erotic drama. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

A Little Romance

Actors: Laurence Olivier, Arthur Hill, Sally Kellerman, Diane Lane, Thelonious Bernard

Synopsis: The disarming comedy A Little Romance features Diane Lane as a 13-year-old American, living in Paris with her businessman stepfather (Arthur Hill) and her promiscuous mother (Sally Kellerman). Mom is currently enamored with pretentious-filmmaker David Dukes, and it is on the set of Dukes' latest Read More

Sweet William

Actors: Sam Waterston, Jenny Agutter, Anna Massey, Tim Pigott-Smith, Daphne Oxenford, Geraldine James

Synopsis: A British-American production, Sweet William is an R-rated movie about sexual relationships that focuses on the flings of an untamed Scotsman named William (Sam Waterston). William has had two marriages and many affairs, and he approaches more romantic adventures without feeling any guilt. His Read More

The Corn Is Green

Actors: Bill Fraser, Katharine Hepburn, Anna Massey, Ian Saynor

Synopsis: Welsh-born writer Emlyn Williams' 1938 play The Corn is Green originally starred Ethel Barrymore as L.C. Moffat, the strong-willed schoolteacher under whose guidance the illiterate Welsh teenager Morgan Evans matriculates as an honor student. Bette Davis played Moffat in the 1945 film version; Read More

The Pallisers [TV Series]

Synopsis: This historical dramatic series, produced by the BBC, explores political and social intrigue among England's privileged classes during the Victorian era. Plantagenet Palliser (Philip Latham) weds Lady Glencora (Susan Hampshire) in a match that has more to do with power than love as Palliser enters Read More

The Vault of Horror

Actors: Tom Baker, Denholm Elliott, Terry-Thomas

Synopsis: Vault of Horror is the first sequel to 1972's horror hit Tales from the Crypt. It is also known as Tales from the Crypt, Part II. It continues it's predecessor's popular formula of using established stars in five witty short horror episodes. The first, "Midnight Mass," shows that having a vampire Read More

A Doll's House

Actors: Claire Bloom, Anthony Hopkins, Ralph Richardson, Denholm Elliott, Anna Massey

Synopsis: Henrik Ibsen's oft-filmed play A Doll's House was adapted for the screen in this Anglo-Canadian production. Claire Bloom stars as Nora, the child-like "trophy bride" who matures rather rapidly when her husband is threatened with blackmail. Even after extricating her block-headed hubby from his Read More

Frenzy

Actors: Jon Finch, Barry Foster, Barbara Leigh-Hunt, Anna Massey, Alec McCowen

Synopsis: Alfred Hitchcock entered the 1970s with his commercial reputation virtually in tatters, a far cry from his stature at the start of the 1960s. Then, he'd been in the middle of the massively successful trio of movies, North by Northwest, Psycho, and The Birds, and was a ubiquitous presence on Read More

David Copperfield

Actors: Richard Attenborough, Cyril Cusack, Edith Evans, Pamela Franklin, Susan Hampshire

Synopsis: This lackluster 1970 version of Charles Dickens' classic novel, David Copperfield (made as a film twice before) turns Dickens' picaresque tale into an extended flashback, with David Copperfield (Robin Phillips) as a young man, brooding on a deserted beach, recalling his youth. The characters are Read More

De Sade

Actors: Keir Dullea, Senta Berger, Lilli Palmer, Anna Massey, Sonja Ziemann

Synopsis: Keir Dullea dives into a bevy of babes with an open wine bottle as the notorious Marquis de Sade in this low-budget debauch from American International Pictures -- purveyors of fine entertainment morsels for the connoisseur. The film takes place as an extended flashback after de Sade has escaped Read More

The Looking Glass War

Actors: Robert Urquhart, Christopher Jones, Pia Degermark, Ralph Richardson, Paul Rogers, Anthony Hopkins, Susan George

Synopsis: In this Cold War espionage-thriller, adapted from the novel of John Le Carre, two veteran British intelligence operatives, Leclerc (Ralph Richardson) and Haldane (Paul Rogers), recruit a young Polish defector (Christopher Jones) to check on some missiles in East Germany. Avery (Anthony Hopkins) is Read More

Bunny Lake Is Missing

Actors: Carol Lynley, Keir Dullea, Laurence Olivier, Noël Coward, Martita Hunt

Synopsis: Based on the mystery novel by Marryam Modell (using the pseudonym Evelyn Piper), Bunny Lake Is Missing is a bizarre study in motherhood, kindness, enigma, and insanity. Ann Lake (Carol Lynley), an American freshly relocated to England, wishes to drop off her daughter Bunny for the girl's first day Read More

Peeping Tom

Actors: Karl Heinz Böhm, Moira Shearer, Anna Massey, Maxine Audley, Shirley Ann Field, Esmond Knight

Synopsis: Michael Powell's controversial meditation on violence and voyeurism effectively destroyed his career when it was first released, but later generations have come to regard it as a masterpiece. Karl Heinz Boehm stars as Mark, the son of a psychologist who kept a video journal of the boy's upbringing Read More

Gideon of Scotland Yard

Actors: Jack Hawkins, Dianne Foster, Anna Lee, Anna Massey, Andrew Ray, Cyril Cusack

Synopsis: Director John Ford traveled to England to film this adaptation of the novel by J.J. Maraca, which details a typical day in the busy life of a detective for Scotland Yard. Inspector George Gideon (Jack Hawkins) begins his working day by confronting one of his fellow officers who is believed to be Read More