- Born
- Height5′ 7″ (1.70 m)
- Maxine Peake is an English stage, radio, film and television actress, who made her name as Twinkle in Victoria Wood's sitcom Dinnerladies. She has since played Veronica in Channel 4's Manchester-based drama series Shameless, barrister Martha Costello in the BBC legal drama Silk and Grace Middleton in The Village. She is also an accomplished stage actress, having played the title role in Hamlet, and had a role in the 2014 film The Theory of Everything.
Peake has appeared in a number of 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.
Peake portrayed the Moors murderer Myra Hindley in See No Evil: The Moors Murders. Broadcast in May 2006, it was met with mixed reactions; soon after this Peake announced that she was leaving Shameless. January 2009 saw Peake appear in her first major feature film role, as Angela, in the film Clubbed.- IMDb mini biography by: Anonymous
- ParentsBrian PeakeGlynis Hall
- RelativesLisa Peake(Sibling)Lisa Peake(Sibling)
- As a teenager, Maxine played rugby league for her local Wigan Ladies team.
- Revealed in an interview in August 2014 that over the years she has suffered two miscarriages and undergone several failed attempts at IVF treatment.
- In Shameless (2004), her character's boyfriend remarks that her passport photo resembles Myra Hindley. She later starred as Hindley in See No Evil: The Moors Murders (2006).
- Her fellow 1998 graduates from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts include Tobias Menzies, Robert Wilfort, Sally Hawkins and Joanna Page.
- First became interested in acting at age 13, when she joined the Bolton Octagon Theatre's youth club.
- For me Jeremy Corbyn is our only beacon of hope to get the Labour Party back on track, get the electorate back in touch with politics and save this country from the constant mindless bullying of the vulnerable and poor. Aspirational? Surely we should all aspire that everyone living in this country has the right to a decent quality of life.
- I thought if I dressed like the guys I fancied they'd like me more, so I went to the hairdresser and said: "I'd like my hair cut like Paul Young." It was a strange spiky number with a bit of a mullet. It took me years to realise that didn't work.
- I've always had pop-star crushes. I had a huge crush on Ian Brown.
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