Julie Hesmondhalgh Biography

Julie Claire Hesmondhalgh (born 25 February 1970) is an English actress, known for her role as Hayley Cropper in the ITV soap opera Coronation Street between 1998 and 2014. For this role, she won Best Serial Drama Performance at the 2014 National Television Awards and Best Actress at the 2014 British Soap Awards.

Since departing Coronation Street, Hesmondhalgh's projects include regular television roles in the 2015 Russell T Davies penned drama series Cucumber and the 2016 series of Happy Valley.

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.

Her brother David Hesmondhalgh is a writer and academic.

Career

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).

In April 2016, it was announced that Hesmondhalgh was to join the upcoming third series of Broadchurch on ITV.

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.

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. She is a Labour Party member and campaigned for the election of Jeremy Corbyn as party leader.

Charity work

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

Filmography

Year	Title	Role	Type	Notes
1994	The Dwelling Place	Rose Turnbull	TV	3 episodes
	Pat and Margaret	Helper in Old Age Home	Film
	The Bill	Jo	TV	Episode titled "No Job for an Amateur"
1997	The Bill	Doctor	TV	Episode titled "Do Unto Others"
1998	Dalziel and Pascoe	Wendy Walker	TV	Episode titled "The Wood Beyond"
1998-2014	Coronation Street	Hayley Cropper	TV	Series Regular, 1437 episodes
2001	Live Talk	Herself	TV	Presenter, 11 episodes
2003	TV Burp	Hayley Cropper	TV	Episode #2.4
2009	Coronation Street: Romanian Holiday	Hayley Cropper	DVD	Coronation Street spin-off, released straight to DVD
2010	East Street	Hayley Cropper	TV	Coronation Street and EastEnders combined for Children in Need
2015	Cucumber	Cleo Whitaker	TV	8 episodes
	Banana	Cleo Whitaker	TV	1 episode
	Inside No. 9	Kath Cook	TV	1 episode: "La Couchette"
	Black Roses: The Killing of Sophie Lancaster	Sylvia Lancaster	TV	1 episode
	Closets	Penny	Film	20 minute short.
2016	Happy Valley	Amanda Wadsworth	TV	Series 2
	Moving On	Linda	TV	1 episode: "Taxi for Linda"
	Broadchurch	TBA	TV	Series 3

Awards

Year	Ceremony	Award	Nominated work	Result
1999	National Television Awards	"Most Popular Actress"	Coronation Street as Hayley Cropper
	The British Soap Awards	"Best On-screen Partnership"
2004
2013	Royal Television Society	"Best Performance in a Continuing Drama"
2014	National Television Awards	"Best Serial Drama Performance"
	TRIC Awards	"Soap Personality"
	The British Soap Awards	"Best Actress"
		"Best On-screen Partnership"