The success of Strike and now BBC One’s captivating thriller The Capture have put Holliday Grainger in the very rare category of being a television leading lady who isn’t Suranne Jones or Sheridan Smith. Her new co-star Callum Turner refers to her simply as “One of the best actresses that we have in this country”. A child star, who got her first job at the age of five after being spotted by a television director, the chameleon-like actress has proved she can play the full gamut; from Northern scallies in her native Manchester accent to – once casting agents realised she could also play posh perfectly – costume drama and now contemporary detectives.
“At first there was an element of having to really prove yourself,” says the Didsburyborn actress, 31, whose first role was in the BBC comedy drama series All Quiet On The Preston Front.
The daughter of a single mum who worked several jobs to pay for her theatrical daughter’s ballet and drama classes, Holliday, always knew that to get on she needed to work hard.
“My mum was always working,” says Holliday of her graphic designer mother Gian who split from her father when she was little. “If I wanted to go to ballet lessons or horse riding it was always, ‘Yep, fine’.
“And it’s only now that I realise how little money we had.”
At her comprehensive school she was academic and at first saw acting as a hobby, never expecting she could make a career out of it. “I really enjoyed it but I didn’t think acting would work out,” she recalls. “Everyone would say, ‘Oh, the transition between being a child actor and an adult is really hard’, so I thought. ‘All right, fine, so that’ll mess up and then I’ll do something real’.”
But when she was offered a role in BBC series Waterloo Road she quit studying English at Leeds University (she continued with her degree at the Open University and got a First) and began to take the career seriously.
Holliday Grainger starring in The Capture (Image: BBC/Heyday Films/Nick Wall)
At first, she reveals, she was confined by her accent and how it was perceived; almost all of her contemporaries coming out of drama schools were solidly middle-class southerners.
“When I was younger, I was often going up for ‘the northern best friend’ or ‘the Manchester girl’. Not the more interesting things that were out there, which tended to be the period dramas.
“They were things that I never really quite got a shot at until I was able to prove my RP [received pronunciation] accent was impeccable.
“As soon as casting directors could see that I felt like there was a shift in more doors opening.”
Indeed, once she got on the period drama circuit, she could hardly get off it; she spent most of her 20s in a corset with Jane Eyre, Bel Ami, the Borgias and Lady Chatterley’s Lover following in quick succession.
Her next challenge was to get casting directors to see her in something other than a costume drama.
“I think for a long time the best and most complex female characters were in period dramas and there weren’t many opportunities outside of that to really explore complex issues,” she says. “But that’s changing now.”
Holliday with Tamzin Merchant in period drama Jane Eyre (Image: NC)
For Strike, she was interviewed personally by J K Rowling who had written the detective stories they were based on; the two met in the bathroom before the audition. “When I saw the wall of people…, I went to steady myself in the toilet and J K Rowling was doing the same thing,” she says. But she was the first choice for producers of The Capture who considered her perfect to play the steely and ambitious but upright detective DI Rachel Carey in the rollercoaster thriller which has you questioning everything.
DI Carey is the moral heart of the critically-acclaimed series which continues on Tuesday night. It focuses on her investigation of former soldier Shaun Emery, played by Turner, who had a murder charge crushed.
CCTV footage appears to show him hitting and then bundling his barrister lover into the boot of a car.
It seems like an open and shut case, but as viewers have discovered, there is much more to it. To prepare for the role of Carey she spent so much time with the police that, she admits, she got rather carried away and almost forgot she wasn’t a real copper.
“I love watching crime drama and feel like I know the Scandinavian legal system inside out,” she laughs.
“But I realised I hadn’t seen it for myself. Then I managed to get some time shadowing in the homicide department at the Metropolitan Police. I spent a week with the cops at Hendon and I just loved it. At one point Ben Chanan, our writer and director, called me and I said, ‘I will have to call you back, I’m in the office.’ I’m not sure how he felt about that.
“I still think I will solve some of the murders I was privy to when I was in Hendon.
Early days as a child actor in All Quiet On The Preston Front (Image: BBC)
‘I still “Every time I walk through my local park I am looking for a body. I really didn’t want to leave.
I will some murders “What I really wanted to do was spend some time with Counter-terrorism. The more people I met, the more people I was introduced to and the closer I got; it became a real mission.
“Finally, I got to speak to someone on the phone and she agreed to meet – but we had already started filming and I wasn’t able to go.
“I was gutted but realised that I need to concentrate on the actual script.The research had sort of become a personal ambition rather than anything useful for work.”
DI Carey is on the Fast Track team which, as the show looks at, means some of her older colleagues have their noses put out of joint by this young buck.
“The Fast Track scheme is the changing face of the police force.
“That image of the old middle-aged cigarette-smoking copper is shifting; now you have these young and academic graduates coming in.
“Our director Ben, who was a documentary director before, was really interested in the dynamics of it. “Having this young buck entering and ordering of the I was to at more experienced people around is compelling – and it’s not just the effect on them but on her.
“If she doesn’t feel comfortable, she gets defensive – apparently this is quite typical.
“As the series continues, and Rachel isn’t sure who to trust, you really see her learning. She needs to figure out how to manage people and be inclusive.”
As the thrilling series unveils, the ground shifts beneath Rachel’s feet. “She thought this would be an easily wrapped up case but the more she unravels the more she has to question her own moral judgment and her own career ambitions,” adds Holliday.
“She has to desire to get to the truth and she pursues it a lot even though some quite scary people might not want her to.”
A lot of the action in the show centres on surveillance; it reveals how much we can learn about other people’s lives but also how what you see on film might not always be the truth.
“What’s been interesting is that even as we were making the show, stories were coming up about what was the truth of things and how the camera lies,” says Holliday.
“There was a story about a Trump press conference where one of his aides had a tussle with a journalist over a microphone. “From one angle it looks like he pushed her, from another, she looks like the aggressor.
“None of it is being manipulated – but there are so many ways to interpret something depending on how you look at it.
Holliday in Lady Chatterley’s Lover with Richard Madden (Image: NC)
“It’s the same as when people make a comment on Twitter and people take it in different ways. You can have two completely different versions of the truth.
“When I was first sent the script it all felt quite futuristic, Black Mirror-like, so it is quite surreal when you see it happening in front of your eyes.
“Real life is moving so fast that the show feels less like dystopian future and more like social commentary, so much less hypothetical than it did at first.
“It brings up so many moral questions of police, society and surveillance.”
Holliday, who shares a London home with her actor boyfriend Harry Treadaway, 35, and who also has a house in Manchester, says that she is eager to try and keep her own life away from surveillance society.
Unlike many of her contemporaries who share their lives on the net, she shies away from it; a wise idea for someone on the cusp of mega-stardom.
“I am not on social media and I can’t even bring myself to have an Alexa [virtual assistant] in the house,” she says.
“I am very aware of what people can do to pry into your life so I try to not let it in.”
The Capture continues on BBC One, Tuesday at 9pm.