Courtesy NBCAnna Friel plays Odelle Ballard, a Special Forces sergeant who is stranded behind enemy lines, in NBC’s “American Odyssey,” airing Sundays.

PASADENA, Calif. — Actress Anna Friel looks Lilliputian in her black pantsuit. The gold key hangs heavy around her small neck. She seems the kind of woman who’d haunt the petite section of ladies’ wear.

But Friel is one tough cookie. She proves that in her role as the Special Forces sergeant stranded in jihadists’ territory in NBC’s thriller, “American Odyssey.”

All that sinew didn’t come easily. A 6-footer accidentally tripped over her when she was tied, hands and knees, and kneeling for a scene. She paid for that episode with a crunched ankle. Her cornea was damaged when a stone flew into her eye, and she dislocated her shoulder from taking a fall more than 22 times.

“I’m called the queen of ailments. I don’t know what would’ve happened if I hadn’t been in shape,” she says with a laugh.

Those who remember her as the girly Chuck from “Pushing Daisies” will be surprised by her powerhouse performance in the show that is filming in Marrakesh, Morocco, and airs Sundays.

As soon as she was cast, the work began. “They sent a Marine to my house, a soldier, every day. We started walking a little bit every day and Pilates three times a week. And I’ve always been lucky that my frame is (resilient). They said, ‘We have to get you very strong.’

“They had me running in the rain for 5 miles. I would run 1 mile and be out of breath. But he’d get me through that boundary and go, ‘C’mon!’ No sympathy, no empathy at all. I said, ‘I ha-a-a-a-te this!’ And he’d just go, ‘Yep. Do it a bit longer.’ When you start to understand what these soldiers go through, particularly a Marine,” she pauses, kicking off her shoes.

“Woken up at 2 in the morning, made to run for 10 miles, going into icy, freezing water. What they put up with is so admirable. They are the real heroes. They’re so strong and disciplined. And I wouldn’t let it beat me.”

She’s determined now, but Friel wasn’t the kind of actress hell-bent on making it in show business. She always thought of acting as a hobby. She was 13 when she was cast in her first role, as the daughter of “Monty Python” star Michael Palin. In one of their scenes from England’s “G.B.H.” she had to chase a naked Palin down a hill. “I couldn’t stop laughing,” she says.

She was determined to be a barrister (lawyer). But she kept getting cast in a variety of roles. “When I was 13, we had a tutor on the set. Then I left school to go to the College of Nuns (Holy Cross College.) It was one of the best schools and a wonderful, wonderful college and again, another wonderful drama teacher. Then I got a job (acting) that meant I had to leave school. I thought I’d go back and finish my education and become a barrister. Then I just kept working — my hobby is now my job.”

The mother of a 9-year-old, Gracie, with actor David Thewlis, Friel says, “David and I are not together but we live across the road. And when I’m away he comes and stays in my house, and he just brought Gracie to Marrakesh. It’s an unconventional scenario that works incredibly conventionally,” she says.

Becoming a mother at 29 filled her with an inner depth she’d never imagined, she says. “When you’re protecting somebody else other than yourself, any kind of self-obsessiveness or lack of perspective just goes out of the window because that’s your primary focus. It makes the job easier. I also think you’ve got something to reach deep down inside, because all you have to do is think of them. You know if anything happened to them you wouldn’t have a life. I wouldn’t survive.”

Six months ago, Friel experienced a loss that left her sadder but wiser. “My brother is a doctor, and his fiancée is also a doctor. And she was expecting my first niece or nephew. … And I was called, ‘The baby’s coming.’

“She asked me to be her birthing partner. And the baby was born dead. I watched that devastate my brother. It was 18 hours in the labor room. You just can’t equate — because birth and death don’t go together. And when you see your sibling, whom you love so dearly, and you’re helpless and can do nothing, and there’s no reasoning to that. There’s no justification.

“I think that just jolted me. They were getting married after that. She’s Vietnamese, and her family flew in from Vietnam. So we had the birth, the death, the funeral and the wedding all in three weeks. It makes you realize how important family is, and how very precious this life is.”