Sally Hawkins shot to everyone's attention when she starred in Mike Leigh's movie Happy Go Lucky in 2008 but had already enjoyed a successful career in the theatre.
She's back on the big screen this week with her latest movie Happy Ever Afters, which is directed by Stephen Burke.
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.
Sally Hawkins stars as Poppy, an irrepressibly free-spirited school teacher who brings an infectious laugh and an unsinkable sense of optimism to every situation she encounters, offering us a touching, truthful and deeply life-affirming exploration of one of the most mysterious and often the most elusive of all human qualities: happiness.
Poppy's ability to maintain her perspective is tested as the story begins and her commuter bike is stolen. However, she enthusiastically signs up for driving lessons with Scott (Eddie Marsan), who turns out to be her nemesis... a fuming, uptight cynic.
As the tension of their weekly lessons builds, Poppy encounters even more challenges to her positive state of mind: a fiery flamenco instructor, her bitter pregnant sister, a troubled homeless man and a young bully in her class, not to mention that she has also thrown out her back.
How this affects not only Poppy's world view but also the outlook of those around her begs the question "glass half full or half empty"?
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.
And a string of movies are in the pipeline for the actress as she stars in Gurinder Chadha's It's a Wonderful Afterlife before moving onto Submarine.
She will also team up with Keira Knightley and Carey Mulligan for Mark Romanek's Never Let Me Go.
Hawkins is currently filming Down and Dirty Pictures with Vincent D'Onofrio, Matthew Perry and Hugh Dancy.
Happy Ever Afters is released 19th March.
FemaleFirst Helen Earnshaw
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