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Julie Hesmondhalgh
Hesmondhalgh in 2008
Born	Julie Claire Hesmondhalgh (1970-02-25) 25 February 1970 (age 54) Accrington, Lancashire, England
Alma mater	London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art
Occupation	Actor
Years active	1988–present
Agent	Lou Coulson Associates
Television	Coronation Street (1998–2014) Cucumber (2015) Happy Valley (2016) Broadchurch (2017)
Political party	Labour
Spouse	Ian Kershaw
Children	2

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.^[1][2] For this role, she won Best Serial Drama Performance at the 2014 National Television Awards and Best Actress at the 2014 British Soap Awards.

Hesmondhalgh's other regular television roles include Cucumber (2015), Happy Valley (2016), and Broadchurch (2017). Her stage credits include God Bless the Child at the Royal Court Theatre in London (2014), and Wit at the Royal Exchange, Manchester (2016).

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.

Career

Television

Hesmondhalgh is best known for playing

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.^[4] 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

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)).^[6]

In April 2016, it was announced that Hesmondhalgh was to join the upcoming third series of Broadchurch on ITV.^[7] 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

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.

Hesmondhalgh is a