Sally Hawkins is a real delight in Mike Leigh’s new film as Poppy, a 30-year-old Londoner. Poppy is a mirror to us all.
Poppy is loud, and joyful. If we find Poppy blind optimism and sunny nature hard to swallow, perhaps there’s something wrong with us instead? By then, too, we know that Poppy is not the blinkered soul we may first think: she is compassionate, perceptive and harbors her own sadness like the rest of us.
“Happy-Go-Lucky” marks RADA-trained Sally Hawkins’ third collaboration with Mike Leigh. She made her film debut as Samantha in 'All or Nothing', and was then seen as Susan in ‘Vera Drake’. Other film roles include Matthew Vaughan's “Layer Cake”, John Curran’s “The Painted Veil”, Tom Shankland’s “Waz”, and, most recently, Woody Allen’s “Cassandra’s Dream”.
Her performance as Anne Elliott in the recent ITV production of Jane Austen’s “Persuasion” won the Golden Nymph Award for Best Actress at the Monte Carlo Television Festival 2007. Other television credits include leading roles in Simon Curtis’s adaptation of Patrick Hamilton’s “20, 000 Streets Under the Sky”, “Tipping the Velvet”, “Byron”, in which she played Mary Shelley, “The Young Visiters”, directed by David Yates, in which she starred opposite Jim Broadbent, “Fingersmith”, and two series of “Little Britain”, as the recurring character Cathy. She recently played the leading role in “Shiny, Shiny Bright New Hole In My Heart” for the BBC, directed by Marc Munden.
Notable stage appearances include Howard Davies’s production of Lorca’s “The House of Bernarda Alba” at London’s National Theatre, and Ian Rickson’s production of Jez Butterworth’s “The Winterling” at the Royal Court.