Julie Hesmondhalgh is best known for her award-winning performance as Hayley Cropper in Coronation Street– the first transgender character in a television serial. She played her with her trademark warmth, intelligence and sensitivity right up until the end when her character killed herself (Jan 2014) after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Hesmondhalgh is now starring in Margaret Edson’s Pulitzer prize-winning Wit at the Royal Exchange, Manchester, a play about a tough academic, also dying of cancer, who takes a more upbeat approach and learns how to live before it is too late. She also appears as Amanda Wadsworth in the latest series of the BBC’s Happy Valley, which starts next month.
Slow Club should be bigger than they are. They have such life-affirming songs
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