When Maxine Peake was growing up in working-class Bolton, just outside of Manchester, she knew of few people who made a career in the arts. Nevertheless Peake, now a prolific actor who has acted and starred in dozens of nationally televised productions and films, was determined to make a career on the stage.

Peake’s early efforts were unsuccessful: for three years running, she was rejected from every drama school in North West England. So as a bit of a laugh she auditioned for RADA (the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts), one of the most prestigious drama schools in the UK, and was accepted. Tragically attendance required tuition — so Peake wrote six hundred letters looking for someone to sponsor her. At the final hour she was able to secure a scholarship and the stage was set.

Peake’s career as a performer has stayed true to her working-class roots and socialist politics. Her breakout role was in dinnerladies, a hit show about cafeteria workers in a Manchester factory. Since then Peake has performed in numerous television dramas and films with a strong social conscience. In 2018, she acted in Mike Leigh’s Peterloo, a film about the Peterloo Massacre, the working-class socialist mass uprising repressed with bloodshed in nineteenth-century Manchester. Gravitating toward working-class characters, Peake’s only role as a royal to date was a highly acclaimed performance as Prince Hamlet in a 2015 production of Hamlet at the Royal Exchange Theatre.