Julie Hesmondhalgh

Early life

Hesmondhalgh was born in Accrington, Lancashire. She applied to drama school aged 18 and studied at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art from 1988 to 1991 (one of her classmates was Benito Martinez). On finishing her training, Hesmondhalgh was a part of Arts Threshold, a small independent theatre in London, for several years, and worked with Rufus Norris in his directorial debut. In the 1990s, she appeared in such television dramas as The Bill, Catherine Cookson's The Dwelling Place, and in the Victoria Wood comedic television movie Pat and Margaret.

Television

Hesmondhalgh is best known for playing Hayley Cropper on the ITV soap opera Coronation Street. Making her first appearance on the show in 1998, she played the first transgender character on a British serial. Hesmondhalgh took time off between 2000 and 2001 from Coronation Street to give birth to her first daughter. After nearly ten years on the show, Hesmondhalgh decided to take a break from Coronation Street for a year in order to spend more time with her family. She left on 22 October 2007, but returned on 17 November 2008. On 24 December 2011, Hesmondhalgh appeared on ITV's The Cube, winning £20,000 for her Accrington-based anti-poverty charity, Maundy Relief.

Hesmondhalgh's character Hayley was involved in high-profile storylines, including a gender transition storyline, and hostage storyline in the Underworld factory in which Hayley and Carla Connor (Alison King) were kidnapped, bound and gagged by Tony Gordon, who intended to murder them, although they escaped. On 11 January 2013, ITV announced that Hesmondhalgh would be leaving Coronation Street in January 2014 after 15 years on the show, and that her character Hayley Cropper was to leave in a controversial right to die storyline, following a battle with Pancreatic Cancer. She filmed her final scenes on 18 November 2013 which aired on 22 January 2014, the night she won a National Television Award for Best Performance in a Serial Drama, which she shared with her longtime co-star, David Neilson. She worked with Pancreatic Cancer charities to raise awareness of the disease, was involved in a petition and attended a parliamentary debate on the subject in 2014.

On 1 May 2013, Hesmondhalgh appeared on ITV game show All Star Mr & Mrs with husband Ian, and won £20,000, again for Maundy Relief.

From 22 January 2015, Hesmondhalgh starred in the Channel 4 drama series Cucumber, written by Russell T Davies. She played the role of Cleo Whitaker. She also appeared in the BBC Four film Black Roses: The Killing of Sophie Lancaster which is a television film about the murder of Sophie Lancaster. Hesmondhalgh played the role of Sophie's mother, Sylvia Lancaster, a role which she previously portrayed on stage. Hesmondhalgh is friends with Sylvia Lancaster and patron of the Sophie Lancaster Foundation. in 2015, Hesmondhalgh won a Royal Television Society Award for Best Female Actor in a Drama for her role as Sylvia.

In 2015, she also appeared in the BBC drama Moving On: Taxi for Linda, with Shane Richie and John Thomson and La Couchette, the first episode of the second series of Inside No 9, written by Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith.

In 2016, Hesmondhalgh joined the cast of acclaimed drama thriller Happy Valley for its second series on BBC One. She was offered the role by creator, writer and executive producer Sally Wainwright. Hesmondhalgh's character Amanda Wadsworth, is a midwife and working mother from Yorkshire who has a fraught relationship with her husband, John (Kevin Doyle (actor)).

In April 2016, it was announced that Hesmondhalgh was to join the upcoming third series of Broadchurch on ITV. The series, the show's last, was screened in February-April 2017. In it Hesmondhalgh portrayed the lead role of Trish.

Stage

From 19 to 29 September 2012, Hesmondhalgh appeared at the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester, portraying Sylvia Lancaster in Black Roses: The Killing of Sophie Lancaster opposite Rachel Austin. The play was based on the real-life story of Sylvia's late daughter, Sophie Lancaster. Hesmondhalgh won a Manchester Theatre Award for Best Studio Performance in 2013, and is Patron of the Sophie Lancaster Foundation.

On 23 January 2014, she returned to the Royal Exchange Theatre for her first role since leaving Coronation Street, in the Simon Stephens play Blindsided, which ran until 15 February. From 12 November to 20 December 2014, she appeared in God Bless The Child at the Royal Court Theatre in London, directed by Vicky Featherstone, playing Mrs Bradley, with Amanda Abbington.

In June 2015, Hesmondhalgh performed a script-in-hand scratch performance of her first one-woman play, These I Love, at Gulliver's in Manchester.

In January 2016, she played Vivian Bearing, an American Professor of Poetry dying of ovarian cancer, in Margaret Edson's Wit at The Royal Exchange main stage, directed by Raz Shaw, for which she was nominated for a TMA and won a Manchester Theatre Award for Best Female Performance.

She is a founder member of a Manchester-based grassroots theatre company creating work about social issues, Take Back, which she runs with Rebekah Harrison and Grant Archer, and to which she has contributed as a writer and actor. She is a member of The Gap collective, a new writing company in Manchester and performed their first gala performance at Halle St Peters in September 2015, in a piece by husband Ian Kershaw.

She is a supporter of Arts Emergency and a mentor with the National Youth Theatre Rep Company.

Personal life

Hesmondhalgh is married to writer Ian Kershaw. The couple live in Tameside with their two daughters.

Activism and Fundraising

Hesmondhalgh is a Labour Party member. In August 2015, she endorsed Jeremy Corbyn's campaign in the Labour Party leadership election. She tweeted: "Proudly supporting Jeremy Corbyn in the Labour leadership contest." She campaigned for Corbyn as party leader in the 2017 general election. In May 2017, speaking at Labour's general election campaign launch in Manchester, she said: "I realised the Labour party and its core values would finally be in line with my own deeply held socialist beliefs about equality, justice and peace."

Hesmondhalgh is a patron of the following organisations: Trans Media Watch, Maundy Relief, Marple Drama, WAST, Manchester People's Assembly, Reuben's Retreat, The Alex Williams Believe and Achieve Trust, and The Sophie Lancaster Foundation (for whom she and Ian held a creative writing competition in schools across the North West in 2011)