Maxine Peake
Encyclopedia
Maxine Peake is an English stage, film and television actress known for playing Veronica in Channel 4
Channel 4
Channel 4 is a British public-service television broadcaster which began working on 2 November 1982. Although largely commercially self-funded, it is ultimately publicly owned; originally a subsidiary of the Independent Broadcasting Authority , the station is now owned and operated by the Channel...

's Manchester
Manchester
Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. According to the Office for National Statistics, the 2010 mid-year population estimate for Manchester was 498,800. Manchester lies within one of the UK's largest metropolitan areas, the metropolitan county of Greater...

-based drama series Shameless
Shameless
Shameless is a British television drama series set in Manchester on the fictional Chatsworth council estate. Produced by Company Pictures for Channel 4, the first seven-episode series aired weekly on Tuesday nights at 10pm from 13 January 2004...

, Twinkle in Victoria Wood
Victoria Wood
Victoria Wood CBE is a British comedienne, actress, singer-songwriter, screenwriter and director. Wood has written and starred in sketches, plays, films and sitcoms, and her live stand-up comedy act is interspersed with her own compositions, which she accompanies on piano...

's sitcom Dinnerladies
Dinnerladies
Dinnerladies is a British sitcom written, co-produced by and starring Victoria Wood. It ran on BBC One for 16 episodes from 1998 to 2000.-Plot:...

, and, most recently, barrister Martha Costello in BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...

 legal drama Silk
Silk (TV series)
Silk is a British television drama series produced by the BBC and first shown in 2011. Written by Peter Moffat, the series follows a set of barristers, and what they do to attain the rank of Queen's Counsel, known as 'taking silk'.-Origin:...

.

Early life

Peake is the second of two daughters born to Brian and Glynis Peake (née Hall). Her father was a lorry driver before working in the electrical industry, her mother a part-time careworker; Lisa, her elder sister by nine years, is a policewoman. Her parents separated when Peake was nine and she lived with her mother until the age of 15. When her mother moved in with a new boyfriend several miles away, she went to live with her grandfather so she could continue her GCSE studies at Westhoughton High School
Westhoughton
Westhoughton is a town and civil parish of the Metropolitan Borough of Bolton in Greater Manchester, England. It is southwest of Bolton, east of Wigan and northwest of Manchester....

, before going on to take her A-Levels at Canon Slade School. It was through her grandfather, a member of the Communist Party
Communist Party of Great Britain
The Communist Party of Great Britain was the largest communist party in Great Britain, although it never became a mass party like those in France and Italy. It existed from 1920 to 1991.-Formation:...

 that she was first encouraged to develop her creativity and embrace acting. It was also at this time that she began to be interested in politics, first joining the Young Communist League
Young Communist League (Britain)
The Young Communist League is the name of both the youth wing of the former Communist Party of Great Britain and the current youth wing of the Communist Party of Britain ; an organisation that sees itself as the successor to the Communist Party of Great Britain.-Original Young Communist League...

 and later becoming a socialist
Socialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...

.

Peake joined the Bolton Octagon Youth Theatre
Octagon Theatre, Bolton
The Octagon Theatre is a producing theatre located in Bolton, Greater Manchester, England.-Programme:The Octagon produces between eight and nine professional theatre productions a year in its Main Auditorium...

 at 13, before a period at the youth theatre of the Royal Exchange, Manchester
Royal Exchange, Manchester
The Royal Exchange is a grade II listed Victorian building in Manchester, England. It is located in the city centre on the land bounded by St Ann’s Square, Exchange Street, Market Street, Cross Street and Old Bank Street...

. She later attended the University of Salford
University of Salford
The University of Salford is a campus university based in Salford, Greater Manchester, England with approximately 20,000 registered students. The main campus is about west of Manchester city centre, on the A6, opposite the former home of the physicist, James Prescott Joule and the Working Class...

 for two years.

Peake's early attempts to enter the acting profession were dogged by misfortune. 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 London's Guildhall School of Music and Drama
Guildhall School of Music and Drama
Guildhall School of Music and Drama is an independent music and dramatic arts school which was founded in 1880 in London, England. Students can pursue courses in Music, Opera, Drama and Technical Theatre Arts.-History:...

. However, at 21, she headed for London after being awarded a place at the prestigious Royal Academy of Dramatic Art
Royal Academy of Dramatic Art
The Royal Academy of Dramatic Art is a drama school located in London, United Kingdom. It is generally regarded as one of the most renowned drama schools in the world, and is one of the oldest drama schools in the United Kingdom, having been founded in 1904.RADA is an affiliate school of the...

. Her attempts to find sponsorship for RADA were made 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.

Career

Peake has appeared in a number of television and stage productions including Channel 4
Channel 4
Channel 4 is a British public-service television broadcaster which began working on 2 November 1982. Although largely commercially self-funded, it is ultimately publicly owned; originally a subsidiary of the Independent Broadcasting Authority , the station is now owned and operated by the Channel...

's Shameless, Victoria Wood
Victoria Wood
Victoria Wood CBE is a British comedienne, actress, singer-songwriter, screenwriter and director. Wood has written and starred in sketches, plays, films and sitcoms, and her live stand-up comedy act is interspersed with her own compositions, which she accompanies on piano...

's Dinnerladies
Dinnerladies
Dinnerladies is a British sitcom written, co-produced by and starring Victoria Wood. It ran on BBC One for 16 episodes from 1998 to 2000.-Plot:...

and Craig Cash
Craig Cash
Craig Cash is an English comedy actor, BAFTA award-winning writer and also a director.-Biography:Cash is best known for playing slightly dull and dopey working-class northern men, particularly Dave Best in the hugely successful BBC sitcom The Royle Family, which he co-wrote with Caroline Aherne...

's Early Doors
Early Doors
Early Doors is a BBC sitcom written by Craig Cash and Phil Mealey who also appear in the series playing best friends Joe and Duffy. The setting is The Grapes, a small public house in Greater Manchester, where daily life revolves around the issues of love, loneliness and blocked urinals...

as Janice. Between the two series of Dinnerladies, following career advice from Victoria Wood, Peake lost so much weight that an explanation had to be written into the script for her character, Twinkle.

In 2006, Peake portrayed the Moors murderer Myra Hindley in See No Evil: The Moors Murders. See No Evil was broadcast in May 2006, and met with mixed reactions; soon after this Peake announced that she was quitting Shameless.

Also in 2006, Peake appeared in On the Third Day the resultant play in Channel 4
Channel 4
Channel 4 is a British public-service television broadcaster which began working on 2 November 1982. Although largely commercially self-funded, it is ultimately publicly owned; originally a subsidiary of the Independent Broadcasting Authority , the station is now owned and operated by the Channel...

's The Play's the Thing televised competition.

In 2007, she played Tracey Temple in the TV drama Confessions of a Diary Secretary, which told the story of John Prescott
John Prescott
John Leslie Prescott, Baron Prescott is a British politician who was Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1997 to 2007. Born in Prestatyn, Wales, he represented Hull East as the Labour Member of Parliament from 1970 to 2010...

's affair with his secretary. On 17 January 2008, she was the Cinderella character in the BBC's Fairy Tales
Fairy Tales (TV series)
Fairy Tales is a British television drama anthology series produced by Hat Trick Productions for BBC Northern Ireland and broadcast on BBC One. Traditional fairy tales are adapted into modern settings, after the model of ShakespeaRe-Told and The Canterbury Tales...

series. On 26 March 2008, she starred in Hancock and Joan
Hancock and Joan
Hancock and Joan was a 2008 BBC Four biopic television film based on the affair between Joan Le Mesurier and the comedian Tony Hancock. It was first transmitted on 26 March 2008 as part of the Curse of Comedy season. Hancock was portrayed by Ken Stott, Joan by Maxine Peake and John by Alex...

, a drama in BBC Four
BBC Four
BBC Four is a British television network operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation and available to digital television viewers on Freeview, IPTV, satellite and cable....

's Curse of Comedy series. She played Joan Le Mesurier, wife of actor John Le Mesurier
John Le Mesurier
John Le Mesurier was a BAFTA Award-winning English actor. He is most famous for his role as Sergeant Arthur Wilson in the popular 1970s BBC comedy Dad's Army.-Career:...

, who had an affair with comedian Tony Hancock
Tony Hancock
Anthony John "Tony" Hancock was an English actor and comedian.-Early life and career:Hancock was born in Southam Road, Hall Green, Birmingham, England, but from the age of three was brought up in Bournemouth, where his father, John Hancock, who ran the Railway Hotel in...

 shortly after she and Le Mesurier were married. Also in 2008, she played Miss Wade in the BBC adaptation of Little Dorrit
Little Dorrit
Little Dorrit is a serial novel by Charles Dickens published originally between 1855 and 1857. It is a work of satire on the shortcomings of the government and society of the period....

and Elizabeth Lilburne
Elizabeth Lilburne
Elizabeth Lilburne , born Elizabeth Dewell, was a Leveller and the wife of John Lilburne.-Life:The daughter of the London merchant Henry Dewell , no details of Elizabeth's life prior to her marriage to John in or before September 1641 are known...

 in The Devil's Whore
The Devil's Whore
The Devil's Whore is a four-part television series set during the English Civil War, produced by Company Pictures for Channel 4 in 2008. It centres on the adventures of the fictional Angelica Fanshawe, and the historical Leveller soldier Edward Sexby...

.

January 2009 saw Peake appear in her first major feature film role, as Angela in the film Clubbed
Clubbed
Clubbed is a 2009 British drama film about a 1980s factory worker who takes up a job as a club doorman, written by Geoff Thompson and directed by Neil Thompson.-Synopsis:...

, as well as in the Channel 4
Channel 4
Channel 4 is a British public-service television broadcaster which began working on 2 November 1982. Although largely commercially self-funded, it is ultimately publicly owned; originally a subsidiary of the Independent Broadcasting Authority , the station is now owned and operated by the Channel...

 trilogy Red Riding
Red Riding
Red Riding is a television adaptation of English author David Peace's Red Riding Quartet. Published between 1999 and 2002, the quartet comprises the novels Nineteen Seventy-Four , Nineteen Seventy-Seven , Nineteen Eighty and Nineteen Eighty-Three...

.

Peake took the lead role of barrister Martha Costello in the BBC's legal drama, Silk
Silk (TV series)
Silk is a British television drama series produced by the BBC and first shown in 2011. Written by Peter Moffat, the series follows a set of barristers, and what they do to attain the rank of Queen's Counsel, known as 'taking silk'.-Origin:...

, in February 2011.

Filmography

Year Film Role Notes
1996 Hetty Wainthrop Investigates
Hetty Wainthropp Investigates
Hetty Wainthropp Investigates is a genteel British crime–comedy drama television series which aired from 1996 to 1998 on BBC One. The series starred Patricia Routledge as the title character , Derek Benfield as her patient husband Robert, Dominic Monaghan as their lodger Geoffrey Shawcross...

Photocopy Assistant TV series (1 episode: "Fingers")
1998 Girls' Night Sharon
Picking Up the Pieces Lucy TV series (1 episode: "Episode #1.7")
Dinnerladies
Dinnerladies
Dinnerladies is a British sitcom written, co-produced by and starring Victoria Wood. It ran on BBC One for 16 episodes from 1998 to 2000.-Plot:...

Twinkle TV series (16 episodes: 1998-2000)
1999 Sunburn
Sunburn (TV series)
Sunburn is a British television series that followed the lives of a group of British holiday reps. It was broadcast on BBC One between 16 January 1999 and 1 May 2000, running for two series of six and eight episodes respectively. The first was set and filmed in Cyprus and the second in Algarve...

Sue TV series (1 episode: "Episode #1.5")
Coronation Street
Coronation Street
Coronation Street is a British soap opera set in Weatherfield, a fictional town in Greater Manchester based on Salford. Created by Tony Warren, Coronation Street was first broadcast on 9 December 1960...

Belinda Peach TV series (1 episode: "Episode #1.46352")
Jonathan Creek
Jonathan Creek
Jonathan Creek is a British mystery series produced by the BBC and written by David Renwick. Primarily a crime drama, the show is also peppered with broadly comic touches...

Marion Cretiss TV series (1 episode: "The Curious Tale of Mr. Spearfish")
2000 Clocking Off
Clocking Off
Clocking Off is a British television drama series which ran on the BBC One network for four series from 2000 to 2003. It was produced for the BBC by the independent Red Production Company, and created by Paul Abbott...

Marie Leach TV series (1 episode: "The Leaches' Story")
2001 The Way We Live Now
The Way We Live Now (2001 TV serial)
The Way We Live Now is a 2001 four-part television adaptation of the novel by Anthony Trollope. The serial was first broadcast on the BBC and was directed by David Yates, written by Andrew Davies and produced by Nigel Stafford-Clark...

Ruby Ruggles TV mini-series (4 episodes)
Linda Green
Linda Green
Linda Green is a British television comedy-drama series that lasted for two series, screened in 2001 and 2002. The twenty half-hour episodes were broadcast on BBC One and produced for the BBC by the independent Red Production Company....

Receptionist TV series (1 episode: "Fitness Freak")
2002 All or Nothing Party Girl
Hamilton Mattress Lulu (voice) short
Holby City
Holby City
Holby City, stylised as Holby Ci+y, is a British medical drama television series that airs weekly on BBC One.The series was created by Tony McHale and Mal Young as a spin-off from the established BBC medical drama Casualty, and premiered on 12 January 1999...

Tanya Wilton TV series (1 episode: "Pawns in the Game: Part 1")
Dalziel and Pascoe
Dalziel and Pascoe (BBC TV series)
Dalziel and Pascoe is a popular British television crime drama based on the Dalziel and Pascoe books by Reginald Hill, which was first broadcast in March 1996. It is set in Yorkshire, and is about two detectives...

Dr. Allison Laurie TV series (1 episode: "Mens Sana")
2003 At Home with the Braithwaites
At Home with the Braithwaites
At Home with the Braithwaites is a British comedy-drama television series, created and written by Sally Wainwright . The storyline follows a suburban family from Leeds, whose life is turned upside down when the mother of the family wins 38 million pounds on the lottery...

Trixie Fletcher TV series (1 episode: "Episode #4.3")
Early Doors
Early Doors
Early Doors is a BBC sitcom written by Craig Cash and Phil Mealey who also appear in the series playing best friends Joe and Duffy. The setting is The Grapes, a small public house in Greater Manchester, where daily life revolves around the issues of love, loneliness and blocked urinals...

Janice TV series (4 episodes)
2004 Christmas Lights Pauline TV movie
Shameless
Shameless
Shameless is a British television drama series set in Manchester on the fictional Chatsworth council estate. Produced by Company Pictures for Channel 4, the first seven-episode series aired weekly on Tuesday nights at 10pm from 13 January 2004...

Veronica Fisher TV series (27 episodes: 2004-2007)
2005 Be Mine Tina's Mum short
Faith Linda TV movie
Frozen Ticket Attendant
Stealing Up Daughter short
Messiah: The Harrowing
Messiah (TV series)
Messiah is a British television drama series, broadcast on the BBC One network and produced in-house by BBC Northern Ireland, although the series itself is set in England. Made up of a series of occasional serials, the first, with two parts subtitled The First Killings & The Reckoning, was...

DS Vickie Clarke TV mini-series
2006 See No Evil: The Moors Murders Myra Hindley TV movie
The Madness of the Dance The Professor short
2007 Confessions of a Diary Secretary Tracey Temple TV movie
I Am Bob Marilyn Monroe short
Would Like to Meet Heather short
2008 Bike Squad WPC Kate McFay TV movie
Fairytales Cindy Mellor TV series (1 episode: "Cinderella")
Hancock & Joan
Hancock and Joan
Hancock and Joan was a 2008 BBC Four biopic television film based on the affair between Joan Le Mesurier and the comedian Tony Hancock. It was first transmitted on 26 March 2008 as part of the Curse of Comedy season. Hancock was portrayed by Ken Stott, Joan by Maxine Peake and John by Alex...

Joan Le Mesurier
Joan Le Mesurier
Joan Le Mesurier is an English actress, best known as the widow and biographer of the actor John Le Mesurier...

TV movie
Nominated—BAFTA TV Award for Best Actress
British Academy Television Award for Best Actress
- 1950s :*1955 Googie Withers*1956 Virginia McKenna*1957 Rosalie Crutchley*1958 Gwen Watford*1959 Catherine Lacey- 1960s :*1960 Catherine Lacey*1961 Billie Whitelaw*1962 Ruth Dunning*1963 Brenda Bruce*1964 Vivien Merchant*1965 Katherine Blake...

Placebo Dr. Sian Nuttall TV movie
Clubbed
Clubbed
Clubbed is a 2009 British drama film about a 1980s factory worker who takes up a job as a club doorman, written by Geoff Thompson and directed by Neil Thompson.-Synopsis:...

Angela
The Devil's Whore Elizabeth Liliburne
Elizabeth Lilburne
Elizabeth Lilburne , born Elizabeth Dewell, was a Leveller and the wife of John Lilburne.-Life:The daughter of the London merchant Henry Dewell , no details of Elizabeth's life prior to her marriage to John in or before September 1641 are known...

TV mini-series (4 episodes)
Little Dorrit
Little Dorrit (TV serial)
Little Dorrit is a 2008 British television serial directed by Adam Smith, Dearbhla Walsh, and Diarmuid Lawrence. The teleplay by Andrew Davies is based on the serial novel of the same title by Charles Dickens, originally published between 1855 and 1857....

Miss Wade TV mini-series (7 episodes)
2009 Red Riding: In the Year of Our Lord 1980
Red Riding
Red Riding is a television adaptation of English author David Peace's Red Riding Quartet. Published between 1999 and 2002, the quartet comprises the novels Nineteen Seventy-Four , Nineteen Seventy-Seven , Nineteen Eighty and Nineteen Eighty-Three...

Helen Marshall TV movie
Marple: They Do It with Mirrors
Marple (TV series)
Marple is a British television series based on the Miss Marple and other murder mystery novels by Agatha Christie. It is also known as Agatha Christie's Marple. The title character was played by Geraldine McEwan from the first to third series, until her retirement from the role. She was replaced...

Jolly Bellever TV movie
The Street
The Street (TV series)
The Street is a British television drama series created by Jimmy McGovern and produced by Granada Television for the BBC. The series follows the lives of various residents of an unnamed street in Manchester and features an all-star cast including Timothy Spall, Jim Broadbent, Jane Horrocks, Bob...

Madeleine Broadcasting Press Guild Award for Best Actress
Broadcasting Press Guild
The Broadcasting Press Guild is a British association of journalists who specialise in writing and broadcasting about television, radio and the media generally....

Criminal Justice
Criminal Justice (TV series)
Criminal Justice is a British television drama series produced by the BBC and first shown in 2008. Written by Peter Moffat, each five-episode series follows the journey of an individual through the justice system and was first broadcast over five successive nights on BBC One.The first series, first...

Juliet Miller TV series (5 episodes)
2010 The Secret Diaries of Miss Anne Lister
The Secret Diaries of Miss Anne Lister
The Secret Diaries of Miss Anne Lister is a 2010 British television biographical drama film about the 19th century Yorkshire landowner Anne Lister. It was directed by James Kent and starred Maxine Peake as Lister. The script by Jane English drew from Lister's diaries, written in code, and decoded...

Anne Lister
Anne Lister
Anne Lister was a well-off Yorkshire landowner, diarist, mountaineer and traveller.Throughout her life she kept diaries which chronicled the details of her everyday life, including her lesbian relationships, her financial concerns, her industrial activities and her work improving Shibden Hall...

TV movie
Alice short
Edge Elly
2011 Silk
Silk (TV series)
Silk is a British television drama series produced by the BBC and first shown in 2011. Written by Peter Moffat, the series follows a set of barristers, and what they do to attain the rank of Queen's Counsel, known as 'taking silk'.-Origin:...

Martha Costello TV series (6 episodes)
Room at the Top Alice Aisgill completed
Best Laid Plans post-production

Theatre

  • Early One Morning
    Early One Morning
    "Early One Morning" is an English folk song. The lyrics are first found in publications as far back as 1787. A broadside in the Bodleian Library, Oxford dates from about 1803...

    , Lizzie
  • Breakthrough, Various
  • Miss Julie
    Miss Julie
    Miss Julie is a naturalistic play written in 1888 by August Strindberg dealing with class, love, lust, the battle of the sexes, and the interaction among them...

    , Kristin
  • The John Ford Investigation, Various
  • The Importance of Being Earnest
    The Importance of Being Earnest
    The Importance of Being Earnest, A Trivial Comedy for Serious People is a play by Oscar Wilde. First performed on 14 February 1895 at St. James's Theatre in London, it is a farcical comedy in which the protagonists maintain fictitious personae in order to escape burdensome social obligations...

    , Gwendoline
  • The Cherry Orchard
    The Cherry Orchard
    The Cherry Orchard is Russian playwright Anton Chekhov's last play. It premiered at the Moscow Art Theatre 17 January 1904 in a production directed by Constantin Stanislavski. Chekhov intended this play as a comedy and it does contain some elements of farce; however, Stanislavski insisted on...

    , Dunyasha
  • The Relapse
    The Relapse
    The Relapse, or, Virtue in Danger is a Restoration comedy from 1696 written by John Vanbrugh. The play is a sequel to Colley Cibber's Love's Last Shift, or, Virtue Rewarded....

    , Miss Hoyden
  • Luther
    Luther (play)
    Luther is a 1961 play by John Osborne that explored the forces that were involved in the life of Martin Luther, one of the instigators of the Protestant Reformation. Osborne was influenced by Erik Erikson's book, Young Man Luther, which had been published three years prior in 1958. In the play,...

    , Katherine
  • Mother Theresa is Dead, Jane
  • Hamlet
    Hamlet
    The Tragical History of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, or more simply Hamlet, is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1599 and 1601...

    , Ophelia
    Ophelia
    Ophelia is a fictional character in the play Hamlet by William Shakespeare. She is a young noblewoman of Denmark, the daughter of Polonius, sister of Laertes, and potential wife of Prince Hamlet.-Plot:...

  • Serjeant Musgrave's Dance
    Serjeant Musgrave's Dance
    Serjeant Musgrave's Dance, An Un-historical Parable is a play by English playwright John Arden, written in 1959 and premiered at the Royal Court Theatre on October 22 of that year. In Arden's introductory note to the text, he describes it as "a realistic, but not a naturalistic" play...

    , Annie
  • Robin Hood, Maid Marion
  • The Permanent Way
    The Permanent Way
    The Permanent Way is a play by David Hare first performed in 2003.In 1991 the British government decided to privatise the country's railways. David Hare recounts the development through the powerful first-hand accounts of those most intimately involved...

    , Various
  • Rutherford & Sons, Janet
  • The Third Day
    The Third Day
    The Third Day is a feature film released in 1965. It stars George Peppard and his then wife Elizabeth Ashley, and is a suspense thriller. It was largely ignored in cinemas and is rarely seen on television. It was directed by Jack Smight from a book by Joseph Hayes.-Plot:Steve Mallory has been...

    , Claire
  • Leaves of Glass
    Leaves of Glass
    Leaves of Glass is the sixth adult stage play by Philip Ridley. It premiéred at the Soho Theatre in London, England, on 3 May 2007. It starred Ben Whishaw, who was seen in Ridley's last stage play, Mercury Fur. American Premiere at the Peter Jay Sharp Theatre, in New York, on 18 January 2009. It...

    , Debbie
  • The Children's Hour
    The Children's Hour (play)
    The Children's Hour is a 1934 stage play written by Lillian Hellman. It is a drama set in an all-girls boarding school run by two women, Karen Wright and Martha Dobie. An angry student, Mary Tilford, runs away from the school and to avoid being sent back she tells her grandmother that the two...

    , Karen
  • The Deep Blue Sea, Hester

Radio drama

  • Guilty Until Proved Innocent (2009), Dina
  • This Repulsive Woman (2010), Deborah Hurst

External links

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/jul/13/bbc1-silk-maxine-peake
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