Anne-Marie Duff returns to the stage to play a 'divorced, exhausted mother' after taking two years off work to care for her late brother who was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's

Anne-Marie Duff has returned to the stage to play a 'divorced, exhausted mother' after taking two years off work to care for her late brother. 

The British actress, 56, plays the lead role in Some Women at the National Theatre following her career break to care for her family. 

Anne-Marie's mother Mary was in hospital for 2025 and died in December and her brother Eddie was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's and lived in a care home before he died aged 57 in February. 

The Shameless star said she is 'so grateful' to have spent time with her family as she opened up on her brother's diagnosis. 

Speaking to Culture magazine, she said: 'For their closing chapters, I was with them both, and my dad, the pair of us were comaneros, facing it together. I don't have any regrets. 

'I'm so glad I was able to be around for all of that, it was a no-brainer. I got a true, very essential, pure notion of what love was there, for a while.'

On her brother, she added: 'Anything to do with a denerative disease is so hard because you do feel like you're slowly goodbying somebody.

'He had started to act erractically in his forties - getting on the wrong bus, forgetting how to make a cup of bea, becoming careless with money, losing his job.'

Eddie was diagnosed in 2017 in his late 40s, and lived with the Alzheimer's for 15 years before his death from pneumonia brought on by the disease.

Anne-Marie is currently portraying divorced exhausted mother-of-two in her fifties Julie, who is simply trying to get by when one day a young boy approaches her on the platform and calls her a f***ing b****. 

Julie feels compelled to make a stand and her response sets off a chain of events that quickly escape her control. 

The play, which was created by Helen Edmundson and directed by Blanche McIntyre, will be in the Dorfman Theatre until November 21.  

Early-onset Alzheimer's disease is a rare form of dementia that affects people under the age of 65, frequently appearing when individuals are in their 40s and 50s. 

Previously Anne-Marie touched on how she has been coping in the aftermath this year of losing her brother and mother. 

Speaking to Good Housekeeping UK, she said: 'Grief is a motherf***er. I don't know where I am with it, but I think that's probably all right.'

Anne-Marie explained in her candid new interview: 'Early onset Alzheimer's is very aggressive and it was desperately sad when his life started to change. Despite that, we had the most extraordinary few years.

'Once I'd learned to go with the flow, there were no distracting factors, just love and connection. We became much closer.'

Back in May she detailed her final moments with Eddie as she got candid about the hardships of caring for someone with dementia.

Reflecting on the final moment they shared together before he passed, Anne-Marie explained she'd known she was 'saying goodbye'.

She described how she'd been sat by his bedside while he was sleeping and when he woke, she told him: 'Eddie, say everything you want to tell me before you go, pal.'

'For half an hour he looked me dead in the eye and just talked - although, of course, it didn't make sense,' she recalled to The Times.

'I feel extraordinarily blessed to have had such a profound moment with my sibling. I knew that I was saying goodbye.'

She shared her sadness as she recalled how her brother was already so far into the illness when he got the diagnosis that he couldn't fully comprehend it, speaking as though he would eventually recover.

But she admitted she felt 'relieved in a way' to have an answer to what was wrong, saying: 'I could lean on something for the first time, because I'd kind of been dealing with it on my own. You go, 'Oh, thank God, somebody knows how to handle this, because I haven't a clue.''

Eddie had no job, no partner and no children to care for him when he received the devastating diagnosis, and first moved in with Anne-Marie before they found him state-funded supportive housing.

While she admitted living with someone with dementia was 'exhausting, frightening and potentially dangerous for you both', she described Eddie as still being 'so joyful' and said they laughed together more than ever in that time, because they were spending so much more time together.

Recalling how touching it was to watch her parents revert back to caring for him as they would have done when he was a child, Anne-Marie said seeing those moments made her think 'That's love right there'.

But as Eddie's condition worsened, she explained how it became clear he needed to be moved to a more secure and specialist accommodation because he began wandering off on his own, which was very dangerous.

However, the TV star said the family found themselves in the 'midst of a nightmare' as many dementia-specific homes with round-the-clock care refuse to take patients under the age of 65.

Anne-Marie shared her anger as she recalled the local council dismissing Eddie as 'fine', despite him being fully incontinent and unable to feed or dress himself at that time.

'I don't think it's malevolent, but it's convenient gaslighting because it is cheaper and easier to place the burden on the family or spouse,' she said. 'I felt like I was going mad a little bit during those months where I couldn't get hold of anybody.'

While she branded the quality of overall dementia care over the past ten years as 'a mudslide', describing the conditions of one home she visited as 'desperately sad' and 'one of the most shocking things I've ever seen in my life'.

The family eventually found accommodation for Eddie outside of London, but for costs far exceeding his statutory financial support.

And acknowledging her privilege in being able to afford the fees, Anne-Marie pointed out: 'I knew that I'd have to contribute a lot of money, and that's fine because I'm Anne-Marie Duff off the telly. But they didn't know that. What do people do?'

'Living with someone who has dementia is exhausting, frightening and can be dangerous for you both. And you're just left alone,' she added.

For confidential advice, call Alzheimer's Society's Dementia Support Line on 0333 150 3456.