Sarah Lancashire: Who is the award-winning Happy Valley actor who played Raquel Watts on Coronation Street?

The actor portrayed the protagonist Catherine Cawood on Happy Valley, a police officer who tackles crime-related cases on the show.

Cast and crew were spotted filming the third season of the BBC series on Bath Place, in Boothtown, Halifax, on Tuesday, January 18, 2022.

Who is Sarah Lancashire?

Sarah was born in Oldham, Lancashire, and is the daughter of late television script writer, Geoffrey Lancashire, who was best known for his work on the soap Coronation Street and sitcoms such as The Cuckoo Waltz.

She has three brothers, one older brother, one younger brother and a twin. She attended Oldham Hulme Grammar School between 1976 to 1981 and didn’t show much interest in performing arts until she was 18 years old.

After gaining a place at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, Sarah realised she loved acting and graduated in 1986.

Sarah was actually rejected from many repertory theatre companies before she was offered her first acting gig by Howard Lloyd-Lewis, artistic director of the Manchester Library Theatre Company. She performed two plays with the company, Pacific Overtures and The Beauty Game which she said sculpted the beginning of her acting career.

She has since had a five-year stint as Raquel Wolstenhulme (later Watts) on Coronation Street, she has appeared on Where The Heart Is as Ruth Goddard between 1997 and 1999 and was in series one of Clocking Off as Yvonne Kolakowski.

Between 2000 and 2010, Sarah has also acted in various miniseries TV shows such as My Fragile Heart, The Cry, The Rotters’ Club, Oliver Twist (as Mrs Corney) starring Tom Hardy and Timothy Spall, Wuthering Heights (as Nelly Dean) starring Tom Hardy and Andrew Lincoln and she was one of the lead actors in Five Daughters as Rosemary Nicholls.

More recently she has appeared in major films such as Dad’s Army in 2016 as Mrs Mavis Pike starring Bill Nighy and Catherine Zeta-Jones. She has also appeared in the 2019 film Yesterday which starred Himesh Patel, Lily James and Ed Sheeran and in 2021 she portrayed the character of Jamie’s mother, Margaret New, in Everybody’s Talking About Jamie.