In 2000, Helen McCrory penned a piece for the Guardian about her leading role in Anna Karenina. “How should a woman live her life?” she mused. “Survive to the age of 70, fearfully, being as everyone else instructs her to be? Or play the heroine, passionately, in the knowledge that trying and failing need not equal defeat?”

McCrory unquestionably lived according to the latter. A majestic actor across stage and screen, and a passionate advocate for the causes she believed in, McCrory’s husband Damian Lewis announced on Twitter yesterday that she had died peacefully after a “heroic battle” with cancer.

“She died as she lived. Fearlessly. God we love her and know how lucky we are to have had her in our lives. She blazed so brightly. Go now, Little One, into the air, and thank you,” he added.

Helen McCrory’s most memorable roles, from Harry Potter and The Queen to Peaky Blinders