BBC News Online: Entertainment: TV and Radio

Emmy nod for UK teenager

Hannah Taylor Gordon played the Amsterdam Jewish teenager who spent her last years in hiding from the Nazis, writing what has since become a world-famous diary.

In the category of best actress in a mini-series or movie, Gordon is up against British actresses Emma Thompson and Judi Dench, as well as Judy Davis and Holly Hunter.

Gordon, from London, was just 13 when she took on the role as Anne Frank.

No training

She was signed up by an agent when she was four years old, and within six months had appeared twice on the BBC One series Casualty.

Despite having no acting training she has since appeared in a number of feature films including Four Weddings And A Funeral, Mansfield Park, and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.

Gordon has said that though she plans to continue with her acting career, she would also like to be a novelist, playwright and director.

Anne Frank, which has not yet been shown in Britain, was critically acclaimed when it was screened in the US.

The series is based on Melissa Müller's book Anne Frank: The Biography.

Steven Spielberg was set to produce the series, but withdrew after representations from the Anne Frank estate, which was unhappy about Müller's inclusion of material from diary pages deleted from the first editions of Anne Frank's Diary.

Ben Kingsley has also been nominated for an Emmy for his role as Anne Frank's father Otto.

The Emmys, awarded by the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, will be broadcast on 16 September in a ceremony hosted by Ellen DeGeneres.