Why Shelby From The Last Days Of American Crime Looks So Familiar
No great crime drama is complete without a femme fatale at its center. In the Netflix original movie The Last Days of American Crime, we have Shelby Dupree, a mysterious hacker who ropes failed career criminal Graham Bricke (Édgar Ramírez) into one last heist before the US government puts an end to all forms of criminality. Of course, Shelby is working her own angle, and as their plan progresses, Graham begins to question the intentions of his new partner.
The role of Shelby is played by British actress Anna Brewster. Although she has been in the industry for nearly two decades, Brewster is a relatively underrated talent who is mostly known for her work on British TV. Regardless, this versatile actress has popped up in a few roles that will be familiar to audiences around the globe.
If she won you over with her performance in The Last Days of American Crime and you're wondering where else you might have seen her, here are some reasons why Anna Brewster looks so familiar.
Anna Brewster was seduced by Henry Cavill on The Tudors
Few periods in history are as rich for dramatization as the court of King Henry VIII. The British monarch is most famous for his revolving door of doomed wives, but the Showtime series The Tudors looked beyond the royal bedroom for stories to tell. Over four seasons, the show unraveled the tangled web of political drama, and the impacts it had throughout England in the early 16th century.
As with most historical dramas, the creators of the Tudors took some narrative liberties by inventing a few fictional characters to throw into the mix. This was the case with Brewster's single-episode appearance as Anna Buckingham, an invented character loosely inspired by the real-life figure Anne Stafford. Anna's father is the Duke of Buckingham (Steven Waddington), a nobleman put off by the wanton nature of Henry VIII's court. When Anna is seduced by Henry's good friend, Charles Brandon (a pre-Man of Steel Henry Cavill), it leads her father to initiate a plot to overthrow the king.
The character of Anna Buckingham only appeared on the first episode of The Tudors, but she definitely made her minutes count and had an outsized impact on the early development of the show.
Anna Brewster snitched on BB-8 in Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Similar to the Harry Potter movies, the Star Wars franchise has always been a haven for underutilized British actors. So it should come as no shock that Brewster has a small role in the first film of J.J. Abrams' sequel trilogy, The Force Awakens.
Brewster plays a spy working for the First Order named Bazine Netal. If you're not up to date on the minor characters of the Star Wars canon, you might remember her as the woman with large, black eyebrows wearing a black cowl and diamond-patterned shirt in Maz's castle. We first see her in the company of a mercenary in the cantina (pictured above).
When Rey (Daisey Ridley), Finn (John Boyega), Han Solo (Harrison Ford), and BB-8 arrive, we see Netal covertly inform her bosses. Working off of Netal's intel, the First Order tracks our heroes to Maz's planet and reduces the castle to a smoldering ruin.
While Brewster's character was never seen after that in the films, she has been featured in a variety of other Star Wars media. Her first appearance was as the protagonist in a short story tie-in to The Force Awakens titled "The Perfect Weapon," written by Delilah S. Dawson. She also featured prominently in the comic book series Flight of the Falcon. The Star Wars franchise has a real propensity for inflating minor characters from the films through ancillary media, so we likely haven't seen the last of Bazine Netal.
Anna Brewster was at the center of the royal court on Versailles
The Palace of Versailles is home to a thousand stories, including the juicy events surrounding its construction. The Canal+ series, Versailles, tells the the tale of this herculean effort during the reign of King Louis XIV (George Blagden). Needless to say, court intrigues and indecent dramas abound.
On the series, Brewster co-stars as the real-life Madame de Montespan. Montespan was Louis' favorite mistress who wielded an immense amount of power and influence at court. In real life, Montespan had seven children by King Louis XIV, and was a fixture at Versailles for many years. She was known not only as a great beauty, but as a women of eminent intelligence and considerable charm (via Radio Times).
The role required much from the actress, including for her to bare all during some salacious bedroom scenes with the king. When asked about how she worked up the courage to tackle the explicit scenes, the typically shy actress told Evening Standard that living in France was the key: "There was something about living in Paris and being immersed in French culture that I was like, 'You know what. F*** it.'"
Brewster's next project, a feature cryptically entitled 001LithiumX, had already entered post-production before the industry-wide shutdown hit. While we don't have any official release date yet, we should be seeing more of this talented young actress very soon.