Anna Karenina Helen McCrory Anna Karenina is the wife of Alexey Karenin, a high-ranking government official. At the story's outset, she leaves her son, Seriozha, for the first time to journey to Moscow, where her philandering brother, Stepan Oblonsky, has once again betrayed his long-suffering but loyal wife, Dolly. While there, Anna encounters cavalryman Alexey Vronsky and begins the passionate affair that will eventually lead to her downfall. Tolstoy got the idea for his heroine's first name -- and her tragic ending -- from a neighbor's suicide. In Anna Karenina, he tried to write "a novel of contemporary life," with marriage and adultery as central themes. Coming from a classical background that includes work with the National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company, Helen McCrory brought a wealth of academic research to the role of Anna. "I read a lot about Russian culture at the time, Tolstoy's other work, and biographies of Tolstoy and his contemporaries. But once we started filming, I threw it all away. The whole point of Anna is that she is alive in the moment. Her ability to love and her ability to be alive are extraordinary. You know from the minute she steps onto that train that she'll never survive. People like Anna either explode themselves or society explodes them. But she has a glorious finale." "To play a character like Anna, you, as a person, need to have those textures and layers," says director David Blair. "It's not something you can put on for the camera. Helen is beautiful, but she's not a hackneyed beauty, and she's very intelligent."