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.
Movies (65)
Becoming Victoria Wood
2026
The Occupant of the Room
2025
Irvine Welsh: Reality Is Not Enough
2025
I Swear
2025
Quiet on Set: The Class Division in the Film Industry?
2025
Words of War
2025
Art Matters
2024
Woken
2024
Tish
2023
Dance First
2023
Choked Up
2023
Wendell & Wild
2022
Lapushka!
2022
Something Out of Nothing
2022
The Real Anne: Unfinished Business
2022
Where We Used to Meet
2021
Surfaces
2020
The Great Mountain Sheep Gather
2020
It's Me
2020
Fanny Lye Deliver'd
2019
Judy
2019
Peterloo
2018
The Last Testament of Lillian Bilocca
2018
Gwen
2018
Ceremony: The Return of Friedrich Engels
2018
Funny Cow
2018
Wonders of the Moon
2018
The Priest
2017
Men Who Sleep in Cars
2017
Cake
2017
Unseen
2017
Dispossession: The Great Social Housing Swindle
2017
Bunch of Kunst - A Film About Sleaford Mods
2017
Generation '66
2016
A Midsummer Night's Dream
2016
Red Top
2016
I Wish For You
2016
The Falling
2015
Hamlet
2015
Strange Weather
2015
The Shuttleworths
2015
The Theory of Everything
2014
Keeping Rosy
2014
Run & Jump
2014
Keeping Up with the Joneses
2013
Svengali
2013
Private Peaceful
2012
Best Laid Plans
2012
DeafBlind
2011
Edge
2010
The Secret Diaries of Miss Anne Lister
2010
Red Riding: The Year of Our Lord 1980
2009
Clubbed
2008
Hancock & Joan
2008
Bike Squad
2008
The 50 Greatest Television Dramas
2007
The Fear of Trilogy
2006
Frozen
2005
Faith
2005
Christmas Lights
2004
All or Nothing
2002
Hamilton Mattress
2002
Victoria Wood with All the Trimmings
2000
Girls' Night
1998
Twisting My Melon
TV Shows (42)
Bait
2026
The Haunted Season
2024
Say Nothing
2024
Secret Life of the Safari Park
2024
Art That Made Us
2022
Rules of the Game
2022
Anne
2022
Star Wars: Visions
2021
Mandy
2020
Alan Bennett's Talking Heads
2020
The Bisexual
2018
Dinnerladies Diaries
2018
The Great Celebrity Bake Off for Stand Up To Cancer
2018
Three Girls
2017
We Have Been Watching
2017
Inside No. 9
2014
The Village
2013
Room at the Top
2012
The Hollow Crown
2012
Black Mirror
2011
Silk
2011
Red Riding
2009
The Devil's Whore
2008
Little Dorrit
2008
Criminal Justice
2008
Fairy Tales
2008
The Graham Norton Show
2007
The One Show
2006
See No Evil: The Moors Murders
2006
The Street
2006
Shameless
2004
Comedy Connections
2003
Early Doors
2003
Timeshift
2002
Linda Green
2001
Messiah
2001
Clocking Off
2000
Sunburn
1999
dinnerladies
1998
Jonathan Creek
1997
Hetty Wainthropp Investigates
1996
ChuckleVision
1987