Maxine Peake

Maxine Peake (born 14 July 1974) is an English actress and narrator.

Peake was born in Bolton, England, on 14 July 1974.

She went to Westhoughton High School and Canon Slade School (in the same year as Sara Cox) in Bradshaw, acquiring two A-levels.

Peake joined the Octagon Youth Theatre in Bolton at the age of 13, before a period at the youth theatre of the Royal Exchange in Manchester.

She later did a two-year performing arts course at the Salford College of Technology.

During this time she appeared in productions with two leading amateur theatre companies in Bolton: The Marco Players and The Phoenix Theatre Company.

Peake was a member of the Communist Party of Britain Salford branch in her youth.

In her teens, Peake played for Wigan Ladies rugby league team.

Peake's early attempts to enter the acting profession were unsuccessful.

She was rejected by every theatre education company in North West England, and tried unsuccessfully for three years to get into Manchester Polytechnic Theatre School and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.

However, at 21, she obtained a place at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA).

Peake wrote a later play called Queens of the Coal Age again for Radio 4 that told the story of Anne Scargill and three other women who tried to occupy a coal mine in 1993.

Her attempts to find sponsorship for her study at RADA were the subject of a 1996 documentary by The South Bank Show.

Eventually, after being put forward by RADA, she was awarded the Patricia Rothermere Scholarship.

Peake has appeared in many television and stage productions, including Victoria Wood's dinnerladies, Channel 4's Shameless, in the lead role of barrister Martha Costello in the BBC's legal drama Silk and alongside John Simm in the BBC drama The Village, depicting life in a Derbyshire village during the First World War.

Following career advice from Victoria Wood, between the two series of dinnerladies, Peake lost so much weight that an explanation had to be written into the script for her character, Twinkle.

She is known for her roles as Twinkle in dinnerladies, a sitcom on BBC One (1998–2000), as Veronica Ball in Shameless, the comedy drama from Channel 4 (2004–2007), Martha Costello in the BBC One legal drama Silk (2011–2014), and Grace Middleton in the BBC One drama series The Village (2013–2014).

She has also played the title role in Hamlet, as well as the notorious serial killer Myra Hindley in See No Evil: The Moors murders, the critically acclaimed 2006 dramatisation by ITV of the Moors murders.

Peake portrayed Moors murderer Myra Hindley in See No Evil: The Moors murders, which was broadcast in May 2006.

Major productions in which she has performed include The Children's Hour in 2008, for which she won a MEN Award, and Miss Julie in 2012 for which she won a Manchester Theatre Award.

In January 2009, Peake appeared in her first major feature film role, as Angela, in the film Clubbed.

In 2012, Peake played the title role in Miss Julie at the Royal Exchange, Manchester, and previously played the part of Kristin in a 2000 production.

She played Doll Tearsheet in the BBC2 adaptations of Henry IV, Parts I and II.

Peake wrote, directed and starred in the play Beryl: A Love Story On Two Wheels about the life of the Leeds-born cyclist Beryl Burton, which was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in November 2012.

Peake provided the vocals for the Eccentronic Research Council's 2012 concept album 1612 Underture about the Pendle witch trials and for their 2015 album Johnny Rocket, Narcissist & Music Machine…I'm Your Biggest Fan.

All of her performances at the Royal Exchange have been directed by Sarah Frankcom with whom she also collaborated on The Masque of Anarchy in 2012 for the Manchester International Festival.

In September 2013, Peake was appointed an Associate Artist of the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester.

Her association with the theatre began in childhood and she was a member of the youth theatre.

In 2014, Peake adapted her play for the stage.

Entitled simply Beryl, it was commissioned by the West Yorkshire Playhouse, where it ran in June and July 2014 to coincide with the start of the Tour de France in Leeds.

Building on this work, in September 2014 Frankcom went on to direct her as the title character in a radical re-imagining of Hamlet.

The demand for tickets was so great that the production was extended for a week, having been "the theatre's fastest-selling show in a decade".

The Guardian said of her performance: "Peake's delicate ferocity, her particular mixture of concentration and lightness, ensure that you want to follow her whenever she appears".

A year later she appeared in Frankcom's production of The Skriker, as "Caryl Churchill's shape-shifting, doom-wreaking fairy".

The Guardian 's Lyn Gardner listed the production in her top ten British plays of the year.

The play returned in June and July 2015 and toured across England in Autumn 2015.

Peake also features as a crazed stalker in the music video for "Sweet Saturn Mine" by Moonlandingz; a collaborative effort by Eccentronic Research Council and Fat White Family in 2015.

In 2016, Peake resumed her partnership with Royal Exchange Artistic Director, Sarah Frankcom, to star as Blanche Dubois in Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire.

Peake's performance in the role garnered critical acclaim with The Guardian describing her performance as "exquisite" and "breathtaking".

In 2017, she starred in the Black Mirror episode "Metalhead".