You Don't Lose Your Spirit...

Popular actress Julie Hesmondhalgh loves to play roles that show off her vibrant side, whatever her character's age

- SUE CRAWFORD

With her short cropped bleached-blonde hair, Julie Hesmondhalgh is as far removed from the image of W the stereotypical mum as it's possible to be.

Full of fun and energy, she lives life to the max and is never happier than when she's out in the fresh air with family or friends, immersed in a new work project, or campaigning for a vital cause that needs her support.

So, when the acclaimed actress was offered the role of middle-aged mum Linda in the moving new drama series You & Me, she was determined that her character would be just as vivacious.

"Television sometimes has a slightly outdated idea of what a mum is, but if you have a bit of rave or punk spirit or whatever, you don't lose that as you become older and start wearing cardigans," she explains.

"I love Linda and had a lot of fun in make-up and costume deciding who she was. If Linda's in her early fifties, then she'd have been in Manchester at the time of the Hacienda (nightclub) and all that."

Of course, Julie is bestknown to most TV viewers as Coronation Street's Hayley Cropper. She joined the show as the nervous, eager-toplease transgender factory worker in 1998, and fans were devastated when terminally ill Hayley took her own life in an assisted suicide storyline in 2014.

Hayley was never known for her fashion sense and spent most of her time in a sensible skirt, cardie and her iconic red cardigan. But in ITV's You & Me, as the mum of Ben, a young northerner living in London, Julie embraced her character's more up-to-the-minute look.