Sally Hawkins shot to everyone's attention when she starred in Mike Leigh's movie Happy Go Lucky in 2008 and since then her star has continued to rise.
She's back on the big screen this week with her latest movie Made In Dagenham, as she joins a great British cast that includes Bob Hoskins and Rosamund Pike.
Directed by Nigel Cole the movie follows the 1968 strike at the Ford Dagenham car plant. Hawkins takes on the lead role of Rita O'Grady as women fought for equal pay.
Hawkins studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts before kicking of her acting career in the theatre at the end of the nineties.
She appeared in Accidental Death of an Anarchist before moving onto Shakespeare productions such as Much Ado About Nothing and A Midsummer Night's Dream.
It wasn't long before TV and film came knocking and it was Mike Leigh that provided her with her first big screen role in All or Nothing.
She moved into TV with Tipping The Velvet, as well as appearing on Little Britain, but her first big TV role came in 2005 in the form of Fingersmith.
She took on the central role of Sue Trinder who is raised in a world of pickpockets after she is orphaned.
But by this time she had reunited with Leigh for Vera Drake as well as appearing in Matthew Vaughn's gangster movie Layer Cake.
She mixed and matched her roles in 2007 as she appeared in Waz before starring alongside Colin Farrell and Ewan McGregor in the Woody Allen directed movie Cassandra's Dream.
Despite the good cast the movie was not met well by the critics and did very poorly at the box office when it was released.
Her big success of that year came in TV when she took on the role of Anne Elliot in an adaptation of the Jane Austen novel Persuasion.
For her performance Hawkins picked up the Monte-Carlo TV Festival Award as well as the Royal Television Society Award (UK) in 2007.
However it was to be 2008 and another collaboration with Leigh in Happy Go Lucky that was to change the course of her career.
A string of Best Actress awards have come the way of Sally Hawkins as the Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards, New York Film Critics Circle Awards, San Francisco Film Critics Circle Awards and the Satellite Awards all honoured her performance as the upbeat Poppy.
She then enjoyed huge success at last year's Golden Globes as she took home the award for Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy.
She has already been seen on the big screen this year with It's A Wonderful Afterlife but her new movie Made In Dagenham looks like it's going to be THE British movie to see this year.
Working in extremely impoverished conditions and for long arduous hours, the women at the Ford Dagenham plant finally lay down their tools when they are reclassified as 'unskilled'.
With humour, common sense and courage they take on their corporate paymasters, an increasingly belligerent local community, and finally the government itself.
The leader of the women’s struggle is fast-talking, no nonsense Rita whose fiery temper and occasionally hilarious unpredictability proves to be a match for any of her male opponents, and is echoed by Barbara Castle’s struggle in the male-dominated House of Commons.
And more success looks sure to follow as she has joined forces with Keira Knightley, Carey Mulligan and Andrew Garfield for the big screen adaptation of Never Let Me Go, which is released in the new year.
She has also completed work on Love Birds and a remake of Jane Eyre, which sees her work alongside Michael Fassbender and Mia Wasikowska.
The actress also has Down and Dirty Pictures, which also stars Matthew Perry and Andy Serkis, and The Roaring Girl in the pipeline.
Made In Dagenham is released 1st October.
FemaleFirst Helen Earnshaw
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