Julie Hesmondhalgh is known for her role as Hayley Cropper in the ITV soap opera Coronation Street between 1998 and 2014.
31 Facts About Julie Hesmondhalgh
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Julie Hesmondhalgh applied to drama school aged 18, and studied at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art from 1988 to 1991.
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On finishing her training, Julie 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.
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Julie Hesmondhalgh is best known for playing Hayley Cropper in the ITV soap opera Coronation Street.
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Julie Hesmondhalgh took maternity leave from the soap between 2000 and 2001 after the birth of her first daughter.
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Julie Hesmondhalgh left on 22 October 2007 and returned on 17 November 2008.
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On 11 January 2013, ITV announced that Julie Hesmondhalgh would be leaving Coronation Street in January 2014 after 15 years on the show, and that her character Hayley was to leave in a controversial right-to-die storyline, following a battle with pancreatic cancer.
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Julie Hesmondhalgh filmed her final scenes on 18 November 2013; they were broadcast 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.
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Julie Hesmondhalgh worked with pancreatic cancer charities to raise awareness of the disease, and was involved in a petition and attended a parliamentary debate on the subject in 2014.
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From 22 January 2015, Julie Hesmondhalgh played the role of Cleo Whitaker in the Channel 4 drama series Cucumber, written by Russell T Davies.
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Julie Hesmondhalgh appeared in the BBC Four film Black Roses: The Killing of Sophie Lancaster, a television film about the murder of Sophie Lancaster.
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Julie Hesmondhalgh played the role of Sophie's mother, Sylvia Lancaster, a role which she previously portrayed on stage.
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Julie Hesmondhalgh is friends with Sylvia Lancaster and patron of the Sophie Lancaster Foundation.
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In 2015, Julie Hesmondhalgh won a Royal Television Society Award for Best Female Actor in a Drama for her role as Sylvia.
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In 2015, Julie Hesmondhalgh appeared in an episode of the BBC drama Moving On, with Shane Richie and John Thomson, as well as the one episode of Inside No 9, written by Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith.
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In 2016, Julie Hesmondhalgh joined the cast of acclaimed drama thriller Happy Valley for its second series on BBC One.
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Julie Hesmondhalgh was offered the role by creator, writer and executive producer Sally Wainwright.
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Julie Hesmondhalgh's character Amanda Wadsworth, is a midwife and working mother from Yorkshire who has a fraught relationship with her husband, John.
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In 2019, Julie Hesmondhalgh played Amanda in the first episode of the final season of Channel 4's Catastrophe with Rob Delaney and Sharon Horgan.
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In March 2019, it was announced that Julie Hesmondhalgh would be appearing in a new six part ITV comedy drama, The Trouble with Maggie Cole, with Dawn French.
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Julie Hesmondhalgh is, with writer Becx Harrison and visual artist Grant Archer, co-founder of Take Back, a Manchester-based theatre collective dedicated to making script in hand rapid responses to social and political events.
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In 2020, Julie Hesmondhalgh played Heather in the third series of The A Word.
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In May 2021, Julie Hesmondhalgh played Nancy in the BBC1 series The Pact, alongside Laura Fraser, Rakie Ayola, Eiry Thomas, Aneurin Barnard and Jason Hughes.
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In 2021, Julie Hesmondhalgh started narrating the revival of The Weakest Link, taking over from Jon Briggs.
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Julie Hesmondhalgh won a Manchester Theatre Award for Best Studio Performance in 2013.
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In June 2015, Julie Hesmondhalgh performed a script-in-hand scratch performance of her first one-woman play, These I Love, at Gulliver's in Manchester.
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Julie Hesmondhalgh 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.
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Julie Hesmondhalgh 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 her husband Ian Kershaw.
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On 30 April 2017, Hesmondhalgh starred in a one-off performance at the Royal Court Theatre, of Lemn Sissay's The Report, directed by John E McGrath.
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Julie Hesmondhalgh is a supporter of Arts Emergency and a mentor with the National Youth Theatre.
31.
Julie 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.