Anamaria Marinca began her career by doing an uncredited role of a reporter in the 2002 Romanian comedy drama movie ‘Philanthropy’. In 2004, she made her screen debut with ‘Sex Traffic’ a two-part British Canadian television thriller about human trafficking. Directed by David Yates, this Channel 4 series had her playing the role of Elena Visinescu which not only bagged her critical acclaim but also three Best Actress awards in 2005 – the ‘BAFTA Award’, ‘Golden Nymph Award’ at the Monte-Carlo TV Festival and ‘Royal Television Society Award’, UK. After appearing in an episode of the British drama series ‘Hotel Babylon’ in 2006, she once again won acclaim for her performance as Otilia in the Cristian Mungiu directed 2007 Romanian film ‘4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days’ (‘4 luni, 3 săptămâni și 2 zile’). The film, which was also her debut film, won the ‘Palme d'Or’ at the 60th Cannes Film Festival and Anamaria, herself bagged several best actress awards including the ‘Gopo Awards’, ‘Palm Springs International Film Festival Award’ and ‘the Stockholm Film Festival Award’. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a 96% score while on IMDB, it has a rating of 7.9/10. The movie firmly established her acting career. The year also saw her in the role of a hotel receptionist in the Francis Ford Coppola big fantasy drama film ‘Youth Without Youth’.
In 2008, Anamaria Marinca played the supporting role of Yasmin Anwar in BBC’s 5-part miniseries ‘The Last Enemy’ and portrayed Smaranda Ciocazanu in Radu Muntean directed Romanian film ‘Boogie’ (also released as ‘Summer Holiday’). Her work in ‘Boogie’ once again bagged her the Best Actress award at the ‘Gopo Awards’, in addition to another best actress award at ‘Romanian Union of Filmmakers Awards’. The year also saw her receiving the Shooting Stars Award by the ‘European Film Promotion’ at the 58th Berlin International Film Festival.
Anamaria Marinca’s notable films in 2009 were ‘Five Minutes of Heaven’, a critically acclaimed and award-winning film by Oliver Hirschbiegel about the true story of Irish terrorist Alistair Little, and ‘Storm’, the Hans Christian Schmid directed German-Danish-Dutch drama film about war crimes in the former Yugoslavia. Her work in the former film got her the best supporting actress award at the ‘Festival del Cinema Europeo’. Apart from these two, her work in 2009 also included a French German historical crime thriller movie ‘The Countess’ and the television movie ‘Sleep with Me’. In 2010, she starred in the war drama musical ‘The Aviatrix of Kazbek’ playing a young woman who wants to break free of her island's narrow-minded way of life.
Between 2010 and 2012, Anamaria Marinca worked in films like ‘Look, Stranger’ (2010), ‘Perfect Sense’ (2011) and ‘A Cloud in a Glass of Water’ (2012) as well as several short films like ‘The Pizza Miracle’ (2010), ‘Ouroboros’ (2011), ‘Sensorium Tests’, ‘Revolving’, ‘Katya & the Scarlet Sails’ and ‘I Missed My Mother's Funeral’ (all 2012). Additionally, she worked in an episode each of television series ‘Wallander’ and ‘Doctor Who’ (both 2012) as well as three episodes of the medical drama series ‘Holby City’ (2010-2011). The next couple of years saw her in the British miniseries ‘The Politician's Husband’ (2013); the British anthology drama series ‘The Missing’ (guest star, 2014); the short film ‘Keeping Up with the Joneses’ (2013) and two films – the American science fiction film ‘Europa Report’ and the American war film ‘Fury’ (2014). In ‘Fury’, she portrayed the character of Irma, a German woman who meets up with an American tank crew during Second World war. The two films have an approval rating of 81% and 76% respectively on Rotten Tomatoes.
Her films, since 2015, include ‘Florida’ (2015) ‘The Girl with All the Gifts’ (2016), ‘Ghost in the Shell’ (2017), ‘Nico, 1988’ (2017), ‘Ulysses: A Dark Odyssey’ (2018),’ The Old Guard’, ‘The Bike Thief’ (both 2020) and ‘You Won't Be Alone’ (2022). The biographical film ‘Nico, 1988’ and the horror movie ‘You Won't Be Alone’ have a Tomatometer score of 92% and 93% on respectively on Rotten Tomatoes.
On television, her notable works include the hard science fiction series ‘Mars’ (role: Marta Kamen, 2016-2018); the crime drama ‘Tin Star’ (role: Sarah Nickel, 2019); the medical crime drama ‘Temple’ (role: Suzanna, 2019-2021); the crime mystery series ‘The Chelsea Detective’ (role: Astrid Fischer, 2022) and the thriller ‘Deadline’ (role: Mrs. Molnar, 2022). Other than these, she also worked in an episode each of ‘River’ (2015), ‘Maigret’ (2016), ‘Midsomer Murders’ (2017) and ‘Inspector George Gently’ (2017) as well as few episodes each of ‘Hinterland’ (2015), Silent Witness (2015) and Invasion (2021).
The period saw her working in several short films too. Some of these are ‘Bootstrapped’ (2015), ‘Creature of the Estuary’ (2016), ‘Theatre of the Tender’ (2016) and ‘The Intelligence Explosion: How to Stop a Robot from Turning Evil’ (2017).
Apart from screen, Anamaria Marinca, has worked on numerous stage productions too. These include ‘Measure for Measure’ (2006), ‘4:48 Psychosis’ (2009) and ‘Routes’ (2013).
