She’s the breakout star of the cult banking drama who went on to play Amy Winehouse and has now been handpicked by Steven Soderbergh for his latest thriller. But at 23, a shock diagnosis changed her world

Marisa Abela finds it very difficult to go to the gym. Not for the usual reasons – lack of time or motivation – but because she says the reception she gets there is “insane”. The actor lives near the City of London, and her local gym is nestled between the gigantic, glinting glass offices of the capital’s financial district – which also happens to be the natural habitat of Yasmin Kara-Hanani, the hyper-privileged and extravagantly troubled junior banker Abela plays in the hit BBC drama Industry. And it’s not just while she’s exercising – that swarm of real‑life bankers desperate to tell Abela how much they love the show means meals out can be an issue, too. “If I tried to go to a salad bar at lunchtime in the City …” she trails off, looking slightly dazed.

Abela isn’t just highly recognisable for her part in Industry, a satire of the reckless, hedonistic, egomaniac-littered world of finance that since its 2020 debut has blossomed from niche concern to TV’s spiciest workplace drama. The 28-year-old also gets stopped in the street for being “the girl who played Amy Winehouse”. (Recently, people have finally started to ask her if she is Marisa. “And I’m like, ‘Yes, I am!’” she says, with mock grandeur.) Last year, she starred in Back to Black, Sam Taylor-Johnson’s biopic of the late singer, an oddly paced film rescued by Abela’s performance, which combines Winehouse’s trademark wit and stubborn iconoclasm with an endearing vulnerability. In her hands, Amy was, above all, a doting daughter and an adorably guileless romantic.