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Sixty seconds with Anna Downes...
Anna Downes grew up in Sheffield, UK. She studied drama at Manchester before winning a place at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and moving to London to pursue an acting career that included credits in EastEnders, Casualty, Holby City, and Dalziel and Pascoe, as well as a long-running stage production of The Dresser in London’s West End. Anna’s bestselling debut novel, The Safe Place, was published simultaneously in Australia, the US and the UK in 2020. Her second book, The Shadow House, was published in 2021 in Australia and New Zealand followed by publication in the UK and the USA in 2022. Anna lives on the Central Coast of NSW, Australia, with her husband and two children.
RTE: Describe yourself in a sentence?
Downes: Chaotic but lovable writer and mother-of-two seeks kind people, beaches, 90’s R&B music and the perfect pair of jeans to keep her sane and make her smile while she strives endlessly to make sense of life and Big Feelings through storytelling and art (craft gin, cheese platters and Harry Styles’ face may also apply).
RTE: What's the one record you'd take to a desert island?
Downes: Madonna – The Immaculate Collection.
RTE: What did you want to be when you were growing up?
Downes: There was a brief spell when I wanted to be a journalist, and as a young kid I could often be found writing ‘novels’ (fantasy-adventure tales written in scrappy notebooks with a purple felt-tip pen, if memory serves) – but around age 9 I was bitten hard by the acting bug and from that point on I was obsessed.
RTE: Who's your oldest friend?
Downes: My sister, Lucy, who is four years younger than me and has been my best friend since she was born. I’m also still very close with the first friend I met on my very first day of school, and who I’ve now known for 38 years; she and I share a LOT of history.
RTE: If I ruled the world...
Downes: …we’d be in a lot of trouble because I do not deal well with stress. I’d probably spend a lot of time alternately freaking out and politely requesting that everyone just be nicer to one another please and thank you.
RTE: Which book do you wish you'd written?
Downes: Can I pick three? Sweet Sorrow, David Nicholls. The Last House on Needless St, Catriona Ward. The Need, Helen Phillips.
RTE: What makes you angry?
Downes: Being interrupted. Noisy eaters. People who think that denying a woman the right to choose what happens to her own body is a remotely good or safe or humane idea.
RTE: Name your five dream dinner party guests.
Downes: I’ll take as many of the cast of Ozark who would accept – because after having watched the final episodes this week it’s all I’d be talking about anyway.
RTE: Who would you least like to be stuck in a lift with?
Downes: An evangelical conspiracy theorist and/or climate change denier with terrible body odour and a bag full of fast-food takeout, who interrupts a lot and eats with their mouth open.
RTE: What inspired you to start writing?
Downes: Several years after I quit acting and left London, I found myself living on the other side of the world, happily married with two children under two and a lovely home by the beach – but I was sad, stressed and chronically anxious. I finally figured out that part of the problem (besides sleep deprivation and all the other usual challenges of early parenthood) was that without a creative outlet I’d lost not only my sense of identity but also an important source of joy. I didn’t want to go back to acting though, so I decided to channel my storytelling skills into something else, something that I could do in my own time and on my own terms. I read a few theory books, took a few workshops, tried my hand at writing a few scenes – and that was it, I was hooked.
RTE: Where would you most like to live?
Downes: Where I live right now (by the beach on the Central Coast of New South Wales, Australia) is actually pretty perfect. But if I had to choose somewhere else, I’d say either Paris or the tiny coastal town of St Mawes in Cornwall, UK, depending on my mood.
RTE: Sum up your latest book in no more than 12 words.
Downes: Two mothers, two sons, and two houses connected by one worst nightmare.
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