Interview: Maxine Peake, actress

• Maxine Peake

There's never any mention of a significant other, I say. No, comes the reply in a thick-as-hotpot Lancs accent, but she has had long-term boyfriends, lasting five years and two. Recently, however, men have become wary. "They go: 'Well, you're mid-30s now, you'll be wanting kids.' I'm like: 'Well I might, but not wi' you, mate.'"

She admits she finds it hard to sustain relationships. "I'm very independent, probably quite selfish and like being able to disappear at the drop of a hat without having to explain myself – most men would find that a pain, wouldn't they?"

She admits too that there's been speculation that she's gay. Is she? "No, but I might have a bloody easier life if I was!"

Maybe, I suggest, the perfect partner would be another actor, better able to understand her wacky, bike-riding free-spiritedness. "I'd rather have a plumber," she laughs.

"One who plays Sunday football, politics-wise leans to the left and is big into music. If that doesn't happen, too bad. And if I get desperate for kids, there's always the sperm bank. But my dear old mum died last year and I remember what she used to say: 'Oh, enjoy yourself for as long as you can, Maxine.' That's what I'm trying to do."

Why did I ever think Peake would be difficult? About to post another mesmerising performance on our screens, this time as colliery owner, diarist and proud lesbian Anne Lister, she's funny, candid, utterly charming – and won't stop nattering, or revealing things, or saying "bugger".

I had to jump through some hoops to get a meeting with her in a London hotel and that, allied to her formidable credits, probably encouraged the belief that she would be "actressy", "serious" and "only about the work". But, unprompted, she's soon discussing her time as a 15-stone comfort eater.

"I wouldn't say I was fat; more chunky. I'd eat anything between two slices of bread and it was said of me: 'She's not shy of the biscuit tin.' Mum was aware kids at school were calling me names so she'd go: 'Oh Maxine, do you really need that other biscuit?' I'd be like 'Bugger it' and have three more."

Today Peake, with her heart-shaped face, pale blue eyes and a flash of scarlet lippy, is dressed as if it's 1959 and she's going ten-pin bowling. She looks great, tells a great story, and the interesting stuff just keeps on coming. Most actresses, in my experience, don't have hobbies; Peake likes prog-rock. She used to be a Commie; used to play rugby league, too.

"I was a tomboy. In my clubbing days, my friend Lucy Davies-Hunt – half-Iranian, looked like Yasmin Le Bon – could wear catsuits while I was the one in the sweatshirt, jeans and Fila boots.

"At drama school it was dungarees and DMs and with my pudding-bowl haircut I was only allowed to play old men. When I graduated I was my biggest ever: 15 stone, with a boyfriend – my first – of just 11 stone. I was 23 years old. It wasn't just affecting my career, it was a health issue as well."

Soon Peake, who's 35, did get cast as women – and how. Veronica Fisher was the blondest and bawdiest of the stairheid bauchles in Shameless. Peake recalls her first glimpse of Paul Abbott's scripts.

"It said that Veronica was 'big, with fantastic tits and covered in tattoos'. Everyone seems to remember the scene where she did the ironing topless for a webcam to earn a few bob. I'm sure I moaned about having to do that, but then you just get on wi' it and go: 'Never again.'"

A locations scout friend tipped her off about The Secret Diaries Of Miss Anne Lister. "There aren't too many female-led dramas that are not just about women having affairs and buying expensive shoes and I just thought: 'What a fantastic character.'" As Lister (1791-1840), Peake is often glimpsed stomping across the moors, dressed in bible black, but she appears naked as well.

"I was told: 'Don't worry, it'll be tasteful, no one will see anything.' Well, I think the London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival saw quite a lot at the premiere. I was like: 'Oh lovely. Sorry everybody!' But Anne was very promiscuous and this is a love story which just happens to be about two women. It's not as if I haven't kissed a lass before – one of Veronica's best lines in Shameless was 'She makes me fanny go all wavy' – and anyway they're cleaner than blokes. In this business, we snog a few randoms and get paid for it."

Peake, who's played Myra Hindley and the lovers of John Prescott and Tony Hancock, used to think this business wasn't for her. "I reckoned my accent and class would count against me; I didn't see actresses as being working-class." Born in Bolton, her dad Brian was a lorry driver and later a cake-factory worker – but, on reflection, she was probably always in training for the profession.

"I used to try it on all the time; I was a bugger. On holiday aged three or four I'd pretend to drown. There'd be a big scene, I'd be dragged out of the pool, and my rescuers would become my adopted family. Mum was always saying: 'You'd make a bloody good actress.'".

Aged nine, her parents split up but Peake says this wasn't traumatic. "I wanted two sets of presents, like the 'divorce kid' at school, I wanted attention from teachers when I cried crocodile tears – I wanted the drama of it all."

When her mum Glenys moved away from Bolton, she lived for six years with her maternal grandfather, Jim Taylor, a fiercely political man and member of the Communist Party. Karl Marx rivalled Marti Caine as her biggest influence. She joined the party and flogged the Morning Star.

Where did she think that might lead? "My grandfather warned me that politics would take over my life but – although he'd be horrified to learn this – it was him who sent me down an artistic path. That was the time of the miners' strike so his house was always full of folk, poets and others involved in political theatre, and everyone was so passionate and the cause was so romantic."

Peake has always described Taylor, 83 and still going strong, as her mentor, and he has been – but since the death of her mother she's keen to spread the credit around. "Mum was brilliant. She brought us up, me and my big sister, and it was a struggle for her but she was an inspiration. She always said: 'Maxine, be different.'"

And Peake is. A perfect day, she says, involves cycling round Salford – she moved back north from London to be near family – or rummaging in charity record shops. She shows me the 7ins single of Frankie Valli's The Night that she picked up for 50p and the digital radio, permanently tuned to 6 Music, which she carries in her bag.

A friend wants her to DJ at her wedding next month although that may be an occasion when the prog-rock stays at home. This is male music, and male visitors to her ex-miner's cottage – "Not that there are many of them," she sighs – are invariably impressed. She first got into Gong and Hawkwind to impress a boy, dropping these bands' LSD-inspired lyrics into conversation. And she laughs as she compares her old chat-up technique with that of Anne Lister and the latter's reliance on Byron.

"Now there was a woman who wouldn't compromise. She didn't get married and live a lie – she just lived her life." Sounds a bit like Maxine Peake.

This article was first published in The Scotland On Sunday, May 30, 2010