Anna Louise Friel (born 12 July 1976) is an English actress. She first achieved fame as Beth Jordache in the British soap opera Brookside (1993–1995), later coming to wider prominence through her role as Charlotte "Chuck" Charles on Pushing Daisies (2007–2009), for which she received a nomination for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Comedy Series. In 2017, she won the International Emmy Award for Best Actress for her portrayal of the title character in the detective drama series Marcella (2016–2021). Her other accolades include a Drama Desk Award, an honorary degree, and a BAFTA nomination.

Friel made her feature film debut in 1998 with a leading role in The Land Girls. Subsequent credits include A Midsummer Night's Dream (1999), Me Without You (2001), Timeline (2003), Goal! (2005), Bathory (2008), Land of the Lost (2009), Limitless (2011), Books of Blood (2020), and Charming the Hearts of Men (2021). Her stage credits include Closer (Broadway, 1999), Breakfast at Tiffany's (West End, 2009), and Uncle Vanya (West End, 2012).

Anna Louise Friel was born on 12 July 1976 in Rochdale, Greater Manchester. Her mother, Julie Bamford Friel (born 1952), is a special needs teacher. Her father, Desmond "Des" Friel (born 1951), was born in Belfast and raised in County Donegal, Ireland. He is a former French teacher and folk guitarist, who, as of 2020, owns a web design company. Her brother Michael is a doctor, who in his youth did television advertising work for Hovis.

Friel attended Crompton House CE Secondary School, an Anglican school; and later Holy Cross College, a Roman Catholic sixth form. She began her training as an actress at Oldham Theatre Workshop.

Friel made her professional debut at age 13 in the television miniseries G.B.H., which aired in 1991 and was nominated for several BAFTAs. This led to small parts on the ITV soap operas Coronation Street and Emmerdale (1991; 1992). She was cast the following year as Beth Jordache in the Channel 4 soap opera Brookside, a role she played for two years. The character was involved in some of the series' most famous storylines, including the murder and covert burial of her abusive father, and the first ever pre-watershed lesbian kiss in British television history; a moment that went on to be broadcast around the world—including 76 countries where homosexuality is outlawed—when it featured during a montage at the 2012 Olympics opening ceremony. She later said, "For a very long time I was defined by that kiss. And I didn't want to be. I spent years turning down other lesbian roles because it felt like going back to Beth. [But it] did also make me want to take on parts that showed extreme sides of women". In 1995, Friel won a National Television Award in the category of "Most Popular Actress" for her work on Brookside.

Upon leaving the show (a decision she initially thought to be a "terrible mistake"), Friel was cast in a 1996 episode of Tales from the Crypt and appeared as one of the main characters in Stephen Poliakoff's television film The Tribe (1998), which attracted controversy for its inclusion of a ménage à trois sex scene. She then played leading roles in small-screen adaptations of Charles Dickens' Our Mutual Friend and Robert Louis Stevenson's St. Ives (both 1998), and co-starred in several British films, such as wartime period drama The Land Girls (1998), crime drama Rogue Trader (1999), and slapstick comedy Mad Cows (1999). While most were dismissive of Cows' eccentric humour, some critics felt that Friel's work as Australian expatriate Maddy was impressive. Next, she played Hermia in the 1999 film version of William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, saying later of the experience, "I think that [role] sort of changed things for me, especially in America, because the cast was really great—Kevin Kline, Michelle Pfeiffer, Christian Bale—and people started to think, 'if she's working with [those people] she must be doing well'".

During that same period, Friel made her Broadway debut in a production of Patrick Marber's Closer, which ran for 173 performances at the Music Box Theatre in New York (March–August 1999). In his review of the show for Variety, Charles Isherwood wrote:

It's the exquisitely lovely Friel who is the discovery here. Her Alice is both the nihilistic core of the play and its tender center, and the paradoxical mixture of toughness and fragility [she] brings to it are essential to the play's deepest truths. It's a star-making performance.