Feeling ruff? It’s Liv the gunpowder plotter
LOOKING sombre in a dowdy black gown, neck ruff and 17th century hairdo, she’s hard to recognise.
But this is Liv Tyler in costume for her latest role – in a new BBC series about Guy Fawkes.
The usually glamorous actress, 40, plays Lady Anne Vaux, who became embroiled in the 1605 plot to blow up Parliament. Lady Anne was a cousin of Warwickshire gentleman and Catholic dissident Robert Catesby – played by Game of Thrones star Kit Harington – who was the mastermind of the plot. She became suspicious of her cousin’s activities after he began recruiting friends.
A trailer for the programme, which is called Gunpowder and also stars Sherlock actor Mark Gatiss, shows a trail of gunpowder leading to a cellar where Guy Fawkes – played by Tom Cullen, who starred as Lord Gillingham in Downton Abbey – sits in wait.
The camera then pans to reveal Catesby outlining his plan to blow up Parliament and assassinate King
James I, who had denounced the Catholic Church.
While a role in a British period drama may seem an unusual one for American Miss Tyler, she has enjoyed an eclectic range of TV and movie parts. Best known as the elf maiden Arwen in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, she has also appeared in superhero blockbuster The Incredible Hulk, disaster movie Armageddon, horror film The Strangers and dystopian US TV show The Leftovers.
Gunpowder will air on Saturday nights this autumn on BBC1.