Trivia

As a teenager, Maxine played rugby league for her local Wigan Ladies team.

Revealed in an interview in August 2014 that over the years she has suffered two miscarriages and undergone several failed attempts at IVF treatment.

In Shameless (2004), her character's boyfriend remarks that her passport photo resembles Myra Hindley. She later starred as Hindley in See No Evil: The Moors Murders (2006).

Her fellow 1998 graduates from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts include Tobias Menzies, Robert Wilfort, Sally Hawkins and Joanna Page.

First became interested in acting at age 13, when she joined the Bolton Octagon Theatre's youth club.

Humanitarian.

Activist for just causes.

The first single she bought was "We All Stand Together" by Paul McCartney at WH Smith in Bolton.