Anna’s Frielgood factor as she gives ‘truckload’ of dresses to charity
THERE are spring cleans – and then there are A- l i st spring cleans.
Glamorous actress Anna Friel filled an entire truck with surplus designer clothes and gave them to charity, The Mail on Sunday can disclose.
And Ms Friel’s extraordinary mountain of cast-offs – worth tens of thousands of pounds – will soon be on sale at a few lucky charity shops in East London.
Anna, who is currently starring in BBC drama Broken, conducted a two-day clear-out last week, deciding there were too many clothes in a storage facility she uses as the wardrobe overspill from her home in Windsor.
A friend said last night: ‘She literally had a truckload of clothes to give away, so she hired a truck. She asked the driver to deliver roughly the same amount of clothes to several charity shops around East London. She l et him know which five charities were closest to her heart.
‘She gave away her stagedoor outfits from her Breakfast At Tiffany’s days back in 2009, Versace tops, Ghost dresses from the 1990s, handbags, Gucci skirts and Roberto Cavalli dresses.’
Ms Friel shared a picture of her rented locker on her Instagram account last week and captioned it: ‘There is a charity shop I know that is going to be very happy.’
A flurry of excited tweets soon followed, with fans trying to guess where her local charity shop might be. The MoS can reveal that the driver deposited the treasure trove to shops linked to Cancer Research UK, Oxfam, Barnardo’s, Scope and Marie Curie – all of which have branches in East London.
Among the haul was a red cocktail dress that Ms Friel wore to her first Bafta awards in 2002, and the distinctive ivory Osman dress she wore to the 2015 Baftas, with its conspicuous dream- catcher style tassels.
She also donated an Audrey Hepburn-style canary yellow pencil skirt suit she was photographed wearing in 2013.
Another friend said l ast night: ‘ Anna has been very generous and donated absolutely loads of designer gowns. They should pull in a fortune for charities.’