When Sarah Lancashire finished playing Britain’s favourite fictional heroine Sergeant Catherine Cawood after three acclaimed series of Happy Valley, she made a decision.
She had exhausted herself in the highly emotional role which culminated in a gripping stand-off with Tommy Lee Royce (James Norton), the man who had raped Cawood’s daughter.
But while it confirmed her as a national treasure, it may have proven to be her acting swansong.
After filming wrapped on the BBC1 drama, Ms Lancashire decided that it was time to try something a bit different – working behind the camera.
For the star, who catapulted to fame in 1991 as the much-loved barmaid Raquel Wolstenhulme in Coronation Street, it was something she had wanted to do for some years. But with work flooding in, she struggled to find the time.
‘Sarah adores acting but the idea of producing had been niggling at her,’ says a friend. ‘She decided, once Happy Valley was over that it was a good time to get it under way. She is so excited.
Sarah Lancashire as Sgt Catherine Cawood and James Norton as Tommy Lee Royce in a scene from hit BBC drama series Happy Valley
‘It has been so exciting for her that even when she won her outstanding achievement award at the National Television Awards last year, she had to dash home as she was up early the next day, telling everyone she is producing now.
‘She may have found a new passion, Sarah has never loved the limelight anyway.’
Before she departs centre stage for good though, there is some good news for Ms Lancashire, 59. Today[Wed] she is shortlisted for leading actress at this year’s TV Baftas for her role in Happy Valley, Sally Wainwright’s gritty drama.
While up against 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 is already tipped to win. If she does so, it will be her fifth time in that category after winning in 2015 and 2017 for Happy Valley and last year for her US debut in Julia.
Ms Lancashire is nominated for a best actress Bafta for her role as Sgt Cawood
In 2014, she won for best supporting actress for another Wainwright hit series, Last Tango In Halifax.
Happy Valley has also been shortlisted not only for best drama, but also ‘memorable moment’ for Cawood and Royce’s kitchen showdown and best supporting actor, with Amit Shah given a nod for his role as killer Faisal Bhatti.
There will be many screenwriters who will mourn Ms Lancashire’s decision to wind down her acting commitments. Her award-winning ability to play feminist icons across all genres is legendary. Not that that’s something she particularly revels in, friends say.
There’s no ego, no social media profile, no publicity machine. She makes red carpet appearances – but only if an absolute must.
Even when she cracked America, albeit unintentionally, it came as a surprise even to her. At the age of 58, after a glittering 35-year career, she was being chased by Hollywood agents to take on more roles. They will now, sadly, probably be politely declined.
It was shortly before lockdown that the British star was approached to play Julia Child, the pioneering American television chef who made her name bringing French cooking to the States during the 1960s.
The actress made her name as Raquel Wolstenhulme in Coronation Street, seen here in 1993 with Bill Roache as Ken Barlow
Raquel married Curly Watts (played by Kevin Kennedy) before leaving Corrie in 1996
She had little idea of who Child was, other than that Meryl Streep had played her in a 2009 biopic, Julie & Julia – a role which secured the Hollywood A-lister an Oscar nomination. And she knew Child was a gregarious, successful middle-aged woman at a time it wasn’t easy to be one.
The call came at the end of 2019, just as Ms Lancashire, a mother of three, had decided she wanted to take a year off acting. Days into her sabbatical, her agent was in contact, asking her to read a pilot script for a new HBO production.
A dozen pages in and Ms Lancashire was won over. She flew to Los Angeles on her first-ever work trip there to audition – even though she didn’t expect to get the role.
‘This is not grandiosity. I never got the jobs as a young actor because I was so hopeless in auditioning,’ she said.
She decided to take her youngest son Joseph, now 18, and make a holiday of it. ‘We flew home and I forgot about it,’ Ms Lancashire added. But soon afterwards, her agent rang. America – finally – had come calling and her career hiatus was put on hold.
Sarah Lancashire won the special recognition honour at last year’s National Television Awards
But then the pandemic struck, halting filming after just three days. Production didn’t resume until the summer of 2021 – and Covid restrictions then meant she was unable to see her family back in Britain. Every cloud, though, has a silver lining.
‘It’s not an experience I care to repeat, in terms of being isolated away from family,’ Ms Lancashire told Vanity Fair magazine during her only US interview. ‘To be perfectly honest, I think I was slightly saved the first time we were closed down. I don’t think I was ready.’
Today, despite the show being cancelled after two series, Lancashire is widely recognised and has a loyal fan base in the US, while Tinseltown insiders, it seems, are desperate for more of her.
One said: ‘Hollywood loves a Brit, especially one who is a British national treasure like Sarah. There are so many opportunities for her here.’
The actress, however, may need some persuading, because she is more than happy with her lot.
While she hails from Oldham, where she grew up with her three brothers, her Coronation Street scriptwriter father Geoffrey and her mother, his PA, Ms Lancashire is now settled in London.
She lives in a £3million, 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 to the BBC’s Salford HQ despite being the head of the Corporation’s North division.
The actress with her husband, former BBC chief Peter Salmon. They have a son together
Sarah was catapulted to fame in 1991 thanks to her much-loved Corrie role as barmaid Raquel. She left the Street in 1996
Locals occasionally spot her in her nearby Tesco, as well as out walking with Salmon and their son. Lancashire also enjoys walks along the Thames, which is just a stone’s throw from her home.
Home certainly is where the heart is for the star. She says being a mum 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 that I get, the harder it is to be away from home. I love being at home. I’m very much a mum when I go home – the mums among us know it’s a full-time job.’
Of all her roles – even Raquel in Corrie –it was Sgt Cawood that struck a chord with women who were juggling careers with the travails of family life. It was created especially for her by Wainwright, who was so blown away with 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 at times been tough despite her success and it is perhaps channelling 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 considered suicide.
Indeed, she spent some of what should have been her best years back in the 1990s unable to get out of bed. She described her breakdown as a ‘timebomb waiting to go off’ and ‘absolutely debilitating’.
‘I certainly didn’t tell anybody at the studios, and I didn’t take any time off,’ she said. ‘I was terrified of being judged and misunderstood. I just battled along. It was the worst thing I could have done. Being in the public eye makes you frightened to talk openly about things – which is precisely why you should. You can really make a difference and open up subjects that are taboo.’
Later, she revealed that she had been diagnosed with clinical depression at 18: ‘I have never known what it feels like to wake up in the morning full of the joys of spring, and wander through the day feeling capable of coping.’
A few years ago Ms Lancashire described herself as ‘a little more together’, joking that she was ‘just about ready to go on a bus by myself’, keeping her depression at bay with therapy and medication.
‘I have my good and my bad patches, my fantastic and my debilitating patches,’ she added.
For now, though, the future is bright – but rather than in front of the camera, she will be behind it.