Sarah Lancashire: The great television actress is 51 today

Fame doesn't suit her - Lancashire was “horrified” when a gossip magazine called her the day after she announced her engagement

Sarah Lancashire, 'multi-layered and sympathetic' as barmaid Raquel Wolstenhulme in 'Coronation Street' (Alamy)

When Raquel Wolstenhulme first tottered on to the cobbles of Weatherfield in Coronation Street in 1991, it would have been easy for her to be just another “tart with a heart” beloved of British soap operas. Not in Sarah Lancashire's hands. This great actress turned the Rovers Return barmaid into a multi-layered, sympathetic character – a ditzy, bouffant-haired blonde bombshell, but with real warmth and likability – and propelled Lancashire into household-name territory.

While Corrie's 20m viewers might have felt Raquel was public property, Lancashire found the pressure of celebrity difficult. The Oldham-raised actress had been diagnosed with clinical depression when she was 18, but hid the illness on set, eventually suffering a breakdown. She finally left the Street in 1996, a move she likened to “jumping off a cliff at midnight”, but the leap was rewarded. She felt able to share her lowest moments, and “came out” as a depressive, confirming what many of her fans already felt: that this was a woman you could have a cuppa with, laugh with, cry with.

Fame doesn't suit her, though. Lancashire was “horrified” when a gossip magazine called her the day after she announced her engagement to BBC executive Peter Salmon. “It is not a piece of drama, it is real life,” she said. “My normal life. And I value my normality.”

It's these “normal” roles that have made her recent work so powerful, notably in Last Tango In Halifax as spiky, dry-humoured Caroline, a middle-aged headteacher coming to terms with her sexuality; and in another outstanding Sally Wainwright creation, the Yorkshire-set police drama Happy Valley – Lancashire is currently filming the second series – in which she plays Catherine Cawood, a tough-talking but intensely vulnerable police sergeant. It's a role that calls for as much of that cliched “northern grit” as ever. But Lancashire would be the first to tell you that it's “just a job”.