Maxine Peake
Biography
Maxine Peake (born 14 July 1974) is an English stage, radio, film and television actress, playwright, producer, director and political activist, 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. In 2018 she played the lead in the film Funny Cow and had a starring role in Mike Leigh's epic Peterloo, a film very close to her heart.
Filmography
Becoming Victoria Wood
2026
as Self
Laundreams
2025
The Occupant of the Room
2025
as The Englishwoman (voice)
Irvine Welsh: Reality Is Not Enough
2025
as Narrator
I Swear
2025
as Dottie
Quiet on Set: The Class Division in the Film Industry?
2025
as Self
Words of War
2025
as Anna Politkovskaya
Art Matters
2024
as Self
Woken
2024
as Helen
Tish
2023
as Tish Murtha (voice)
Dance First
2023
as Barbara
Choked Up
2023
as Fiona Lacey
Wendell & Wild
2022
as Irmgard Klaxon (voice)
- No poster
Inner Polar Bear
2022
as Narrator (voice)
Lapushka!
2022
as Scoot Piccolo
Something Out of Nothing
2022
The Real Anne: Unfinished Business
2022
as Self- Presenter
Where We Used to Meet
2021
Surfaces
2020
as Alix
The Great Mountain Sheep Gather
2020
as Self - Narrator
It's Me
2020
as Miriam
Fanny Lye Deliver'd
2019
as Fanny Lye
- No poster
Be Still My Beating Heart
2019
Judy
2019
as Judy