Why you’ll never see Sarah Lancashire on TV again: She overcame depression and suicidal thoughts while starring in Coronation Street to achieve Hollywood stardom. But, KATIE HIND reveals, the Baftas will be her swan song

When Sarah Lancashire finished playing Britain’s favorite fictional heroine Sergeant Catherine Cawood after three critically acclaimed series of Happy Valley, she made a decision.

She had exhausted herself in the highly emotional role that culminated in a harrowing confrontation with Tommy Lee Royce (James Norton), the man who raped Cawood’s daughter.

But while it cemented her as a national treasure, it may have proven to be her acting swan song.

After filming on the BBC1 drama wrapped, Ms Lancashire decided it was time to try something different: working behind the camera.

For the star, who found fame as much-loved barmaid Raquel Wolstenhulme in Coronation Street in 1991, it was something she had wanted to do for a number of years. But as work flowed in, she struggled to find the time.

“Sarah loves acting, but the idea of ​​producing bothered her,” says a friend. “Once Happy Valley was over, she decided it was a good time to get started. She’s so excited.

‘It was so exciting for her that even when she won her Outstanding Achievement Award at the National Television Awards last year, she had to run home because she was getting up early the next day and telling everyone she was now producing.

‘She may have found a new passion, but Sarah never liked the spotlight anyway.’

Before she leaves the stage for good, there’s good news for Ms Lancashire, 59, today[Wed] she is shortlisted for lead actress at this year’s TV Baftas for her role in Happy Valley, Sally Wainwright’s gritty drama.

While she faces stiff competition – Anjana Vasan for Black Mirror, Anne Reid in The Sixth Commandment, Bella Ramsey for The Last Of Us, Helena Bonham Carter for Nolly and Sharon Horgan for her role in Best Interests – she’s already been tipped to win. If she does, it will be her fifth time in that category, after winning in 2015 and 2017 for Happy Valley and last year for her U.S. debut in Julia.

In 2014, she won Best Supporting Actress for another Wainwright hit series, Last Tango In Halifax.

Happy Valley is also shortlisted not only for best drama, but also for ‘memorable moment’ for Cawood and Royce’s kitchen showdown and best supporting actor, with Amit Shah getting a nod for his role as murderer Faisal Bhatti.

There will be many screenwriters who will mourn Ms. Lancashire’s decision to scale back her acting commitments. Her award-winning ability to play feminist icons across all genres is legendary. Not that she particularly enjoys it, friends say.

There is no ego, no social media profile, no publicity machine. She appears on the red carpet – but only when absolutely necessary.

Even when she destroyed America, albeit unintentionally, it came as a surprise to even her. At the age of 58, after a glittering 35-year career, she was pursued by Hollywood agents to take on more roles. Unfortunately, they will now likely be politely declined.

Shortly before the lockdown, the British star was approached to play Julia Child, the pioneering American television chef who made a name for herself by bringing French cuisine to the United States in the 1960s.

She had little idea who Child was, other than that Meryl Streep had played her in a 2009 biopic, Julie & Julia – a role that earned the Hollywood A-lister an Oscar nomination. And she knew that Child was a sociable, successful middle-aged woman, even though it wasn’t easy to be one.

The call came in late 2019, just as Ms Lancashire, a mother of three, had decided she wanted to take a year off from acting. Days after her sabbatical, her agent contacted her and asked her to read a pilot script for a new HBO production.

A dozen pages later and Mrs. Lancashire was convinced. She flew to Los Angeles on her very first business trip there to audition, even though she didn’t expect to get the part.

“This is not greatness. “I never got the job as a young actor because I was so hopeless at auditions,” she said.

She decided to take her youngest son Joseph, now 18, and make a vacation of it. “We flew home and I forgot about it,” Mrs Lancashire added. But soon after, her agent called. America had arrived – finally – and her career break was put on hold.

But then the pandemic struck, halting filming after just three days. Production did not resume until the summer of 2021 – and Covid restrictions then meant she could no longer see her family in Britain. However, every cloud has a silver lining.

“It’s not an experience I want to repeat, in terms of being isolated from family,” Ms Lancashire told Vanity Fair magazine in her only US interview. “To be completely honest, I think I was saved a little bit when we first got shut down. I don’t think I was ready for it.’

Today, despite the show being canceled after two series, Lancashire is widely recognized and has a loyal fan base in the US, while Tinseltown insiders are seemingly desperate for more of her.

One said: ‘Hollywood loves a Brit, especially one who, like Sarah, is a British national treasure. There are so many opportunities for her here.”

The actress may need some convincing as she is more than happy with her lot.

Although she is from Oldham, where she grew up with her three brothers, her father Geoffrey, Coronation Street screenwriter, and her mother, his PA Mrs Lancashire, now live in London.

She lives in a £3 million, five-bedroom house on a quiet road in the south-west London enclave of Twickenham with her husband Peter Salmon, the former controller of BBC1, who famously refused to move into the BBC’s headquarters in Salford, despite being head of it. of the company’s North division.

Locals occasionally see her in her nearby Tesco, as well as on a walk with Salmon and their son. Lancashire also enjoys walks along the Thames, which is just a stone’s throw from her home.

Home is definitely where the heart is for the star. She says being a mother is her most important role. She has two older sons – Tom, 34, and Matthew, 32 – from her ten-year marriage to musician Gary Hargreaves, and Joseph with Salmon.

She said: ‘The older I get, the harder it is to be away from home. I like being home. When I go home, I’m really a mother; the mothers among us know that it is a full-time job.’

Of all her roles – even Raquel in Corrie – it was Sergeant Cawood who struck a chord with women juggling their careers with the trials of family life. It was created especially for her by Wainwright, who was so impressed by the actress’s Bafta-winning performance as lesbian headmistress Caroline in Last Tango In Halifax that she knew she wanted to work with her again.

Ms Lancashire’s personal life has been tough at times despite her success and it is perhaps the channeling of such experiences that has given her characters such authenticity. Accolades for her five years in Coronation Street (she left in 1996) and dramas such as Where The Heart Is, Clocking Off and The Paradise, came even as she secretly battled depression and even contemplated suicide.

She even spent part of what should have been her best years in the 1990s without getting out of bed. She described her breakdown as a “time bomb waiting to go off” and “absolutely debilitating.”

“I definitely didn’t tell anyone at the studios and I didn’t take any time off,” she said. ‘I was terrified of being judged and misunderstood. I just fought along. It was the worst thing I could have done. When you’re in the public eye, you’re afraid to talk about things openly – and that’s exactly why you should. You can really make a difference and address taboo topics.’

She later revealed that she had been diagnosed with clinical depression at the age of 18: “I never knew what it felt like to wake up in the morning full of spring joy and wander through the day feeling like I could handle it.”

A few years ago, Ms Lancashire described herself as “a little more together”, joking that she was “just about ready to take the bus alone”, keeping her depression at bay with therapy and medication.

“I have my good spots and my bad spots, my great spots and my debilitating spots,” she added.

But for now, the future looks bright, but instead of in front of the camera, she will be behind it.